The pandemic has driven a sharp surge in remote and hybrid working, increasing from 5.7%of UK workers in January 2020 to 31.5%of workers over the course of the first national lockdown. Following the easing of restrictions in July 2021, the proportion of workers who continue to work remotely remains well above prepandemic levels. Despite a widespread conception that remote working is more widely used in the South of England, recentWork Foundation research indicates that take-up of remote working has been reasonably consistent across the UK, and substantially so in the North of England through the pandemic, with 29%of workers in the North East and 27%of workers in the North West working remotely in March 2021. Take-up of remote working was higher in sectors that are largely office-based than in sectors where many roles require tasks to be completed on-site. For example, 50%of staff in professional services in the North of England shifted to remote working compared with just 16%of staff in manufacturing. In the context of this research, 33 interviews were conducted with businesses and stakeholders in the North of England. Currently, many employers are adopting hybrid working models. This may mean some workers are onsite all the time while some of their colleagues work exclusively remotely, or this may mean that each worker splits their time between remote working and the office. Formanyworkers, remoteworking is a positive experience. Individuals particularly appreciated the time they saved on the commute and reported improvements in their work-life balance. However, others reported that the boundaries betweenwork and life had blurred and that they felt theywere “living at the office”. Some employers drew important lessons around balancing flexibility andwellbeing from this that they are applying to their hybrid workingmodel going forward. For example, some organisations reported they had started to block out time for lunch that could not be used for meetings and had askedmanagers not to email workers outside of working hours. Additionally, we have witnessed a broader rethink around how work should be done and assessed. Many 44 | organisations who were previously wary of remote working have found that productivity was not impacted when workers shifted ‘out of sight’. Because of the increasing use of digital technology, remote working does offer greater scope for real-time performance monitoring. However, many businesses reported that they had shifted from a focus on ‘input’, meaning the time that people put in, to ‘outcomes’. This moved the focus away frommonitoring activities towards supporting workers to organise their own tasks. Many employers are still getting to grips with the need to replicate elements of office culture through a hybrid model. Video calls are no substitute for informal interpersonal contact among colleagues, and many were conscious of the value of incidental sharing of knowledge and ideas that can occur in a shared working environment. This was felt to be particularly important in enabling shadowing and on-the-job learning for new starters and more junior teammembers. With restrictions easing, organisations using a hybrid model may choose to plan collaborative on-site time to mitigate this, creating opportunities for learning and development. HOWTOFACILITATE THEUPTAKE OF SUSTAINEDREMOTEAND HYBRIDWORKING It is important to remember that remote working during a pandemic is very different from remote working at any other time. The sense of isolation and negative wellbeing effects that some workers have experienced as a result of the shift to remote working is due in part to the effects of the wider lockdown and the constraints this placed on social contact outside of work. However, there are specific risks in remote working around stress caused by the need to be ‘virtually present’ at all times that employers should aim to mitigate. Getting this right might require a period of experimentation in which employers and employees try out a range of new practices, and keep what works. Employers have an important role in fostering an environment in which there is scope for experimentation and open dialogue around arrangements that work best for individuals and their wider teams. Lastly, the pandemic has placed huge emphasis on remote working as a way to gain more flexibility in our working lives and obtain a better work-life balance, but we must not forget that there are many jobs that cannot be carried out remotely, and that remote working does not suit everybody. For these workers, there are other ways to improve access to flexibility, for example through flexitime, job share or compressed hours. Our recent work with the Chartered Management Institute, identifies the steps employers and policymakers can take to ensure remote and hybrid working is inclusive, through exploring the experiences and perspectives of disabled people, working parents and those with caring responsibilities. Rebecca Florisson is a Policy Adviser at theWork Foundation. The report Hybridand remote working in theNorthof England– impact and futureprospects was produced by theWork Foundation andNewcastleUniversity Business School. r.florisson@lancaster.ac.uk FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 45
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