The inventions and advancements were certain to make work faster, remote, and more boundless – but the Covid-19 pandemic simply accelerated the adoption of the modern way of working.

While remote work and hybrid work was the key development driven by technology, the now celebrated aspects of not just remote work but also the new consciousness around work seemed bound to happen. The Covid-19 pandemic simply left the world with no option but to come to terms with a revised work and lifestyle more urgently. Risk-managed well for the hasty-switch made in the pandemic, it is hard to argue against Hybrid or remote work.

Let us now examine each aspect separately.

Hybrid Work and Remote Work

As discussed in the previous blogs, remote work is not a new phenomenon.

IBM was, in many ways, one of the pioneers in designing a remote work strategy and letting 5 employees work remotely in 1979, as a part of an experiment.

By 1987, 1.5 million Americans were telecommuting.

Later, Governments made it mandatory for companies to allow remote work for employees who were ‘eligible.’

Yes, the number of people working remotely was never huge, but it was a cause many people were championing for a long time.

For instance, people with disabilities have been requesting remote work for decades.

Work-Life Balance

Many factory workers in the United States had 18-hour-long shifts, six days a week. While some people certainly struggled, others looked down upon the ones that didn’t contribute as much.

In 1817, Robert Owens, an industrialist, was the first person to introduce and popularize the approach of “eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.”

It took a while for everyone to adopt this model, even in the face of mounting pressure from labour organizers.

Later, in 1920, Henry Ford made the ‘9 to 5’ workday a mainstream concept.

But come 2000 and the digitization that the years that followed accompanied, certain ‘jobs’ and ‘gigs’ emerged that didn’t require a strict 8-hour productivity day.

For instance, bloggers, Youtubers, cameramen, videographers, and freelancers.

Soon enough, people began to question the inflexibility that office jobs came with.

A direct response to these things was also companies coming up with plans to allow recreation time (think smoke breaks, snooker breaks) during a regular work day.

But when the pandemic pushed everyone to begin working from home, flexibility very quickly became something that workers around the world always deserved but got to experience only now.

This is also why remote work is eventually evolving into hybrid work – flexibility has become a major prerequisite to employee productivity, efficiency and well-being. A full return to office is not on the cards.

Better Compensation

To protect workers during the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938.

By 1956, the U.S. Congress raised the minimum wage many times.

But it wasn’t enough.

Over the years that followed, workers began investing in organized efforts towards pushing the Government to raise the minimum wage.

Protests for the same began early on. It was in 2015 that the “Fight for $15” started as a Fast Food Forward Movement and quickly became a national labour movement.

The pandemic, however, gave more momentum to such protests.

It was as recent as 2021 that workers rallied for pushing the Government to increase the minimum wage to $15/hour.

In 2022, from Swiggy workers in India to Starbucks workers in the United States – everyone protested for increased monthly payments and better working conditions.

2022 also saw a surge in union activity, in many sectors. Employees went on strikes and walkouts in large numbers. Teachers, nurses, doctors, railway workers, and baristas demonstrated work stoppages. Employees and workers in companies like Amazon and Apple filed thousands of petitions to form unions.

Remote and Hybrid work along-with balance and fair compensation seem to be a part of a set of long-term employee asks intensified by the pandemic.

While fair compensation is likely to remain contentious for the long-term, the future of work with remote and hybrid work, and its implication on work-life seem set in the consciousness. The recession following the pandemic has seem businesses adapt to this future. Not just for the employee benefit but also because of the massive boost to their bottom-line by expenditure saved from the second biggest expenditure item – premises and maintenance.

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For many workers, the first contact they had with remote work was during the pandemic – a time when they were battling health concerns, hospitalization, loneliness, uncertainty, paralyzing boredom or unremitting fear.

For these workers, their first experience with remote work reasonably felt tainted with negative feelings. Despite this, the fact that there is so much clamour for remote or hybrid work speaks volumes about the positives attached.

That said, in a post-pandemic world, when remote work no longer carries the association of doom and gloom that the pandemic has cast upon people, let’s imagine how life changes with remote or hybrid work post-pandemic! A picture is worth a thousand words, so let us paint a picture. Hopefully, you see your life in it in some form or another:

It is 2023.

The pandemic has now moved to the rear-view mirror.

Sheila, 31, stays in Mumbai with her husband Aman, 36. She works remotely for a design firm in New Hampshire while Aman works for a marketing firm headquartered in Delhi – the marketing firm has a Hybrid work arrangement wherein Aman goes to the Delhi HQ for two days every two months and to the Mumbai branch once every week.

Sheila and Aman wake up to a new day. They’ve got enough time on their hands to make fresh pancakes for breakfast. Their morning routines are calm and at no point do they find themselves rushing. Aman surprises her with a new kind of syrup he had got and hidden for a pancake day.

After a ninety-minute breakfast and news session, they head to shower and change for work and head to their respective workstations. After spending an hour on prep work, Sheila attends a video call meeting from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM after which she spends an hour updating her presentations with the outcome of the video call.

Aman has to design a promotion strategy for a client today. He works at it full tilt in a darkened room with instrumental music on headphones that he feels spikes his creativity. He does this till the afternoon and then heads down for lunch.

Sheila has just started cooking vegetable pasta for them. Aman helps with the sauce, whips up a fresh salad and they have lunch together.

After finishing up, Sheila goes for a stroll with her neighbour around the block and picks up some dog food on her way back. Aman, on the other hand, wants to finish the last three pages of the book he was reading last night.

They resume work at 2. Towards the evening, Sheila is done with her presentation and budgetary assessment due that day. She inquires with Aman and he says he would need an hour more. She snips her plants, waters them, awards her dogs a belly rub, makes some coffee and sits near him on the balcony enjoying the sunset reflecting off the glass facades. There is comfortable silence between them.

After Aman finishes up, they go for an hour-long walk with their dog and then come back to a plate of momos that they have ordered. They love the momos because they go very well with a sauce Aman buys from a vendor in Delhi during his visits and the rice crispies he buys on his way to work every week. Monday momos they call them.

Over dessert (a plate of Apple Cider Donuts from Sheila’s supervisor), they decode to watch a movie together. Since it was Aman’s turn to pick, they picked a sci-fi movie. Though it’s now quite late at night, they don’t have to worry about commuting as they can afford to sleep in an extra hour the next morning and shorten their breakfast from 90 to 60 minutes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A senior banker from the complex global markets space, Mr Nishant Shah has worked for more than two decades across Citibank, Standard Chartered and JPMorgan Chase before taking over as our Managing Partner. Passionate with word and pen about finance, technology, macroeconomics and future trends, he is a Chartered Accountant by education and the winner of various prestigious awards during his career, including the ‘India Awards for Excellence’.

The post Reimagining Remote & Hybrid Work in a Post-Pandemic World appeared first on Jackstien Practices, India.

Several technology companies have been following this model since years.

What is indeed new is the size and speed of the shift; a shift from a niche model reserved for a select few to a wide proliferation, acceptance and preference for the Remote Work model across the board.

Though the word revolution often tends to get overused, the shift to Remote and Hybrid Work does truly qualify as a revolution.

Of course, it’s not suitable for everyone; professions like assembly line attendants, construction supervisors or repair & maintenance professionals may need to wait for massive improvements in 3D printing technology.

Medical professionals may need to wait for multi-fold proliferation of sensor-based hardware or massive refinements in the dexterity of robotic surgical equipment.

However, for a majority of knowledge-centric work – typical of financial institutions with digitally owned & controlled assets – the future has arrived. These institutions, already a part of the way there, are hungering to adapt to this New Normal.

Yet other organizations are keen to shift some sections of their organizations to Remote and Hybrid Work.

Unfortunately, as we all know well, the route to this fantastic place has wound through difficult times.

The Trigger

Though the world has been undergoing changes to the way we live and work since years, the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly the trigger for the widespread changes and adoption. In some cases, changes have been accelerated by up to a decade by COVID-19.

In essence, Remote and/or Hybrid Work has proven to be the silver lining in an otherwise dark and dense cloud.

COVID-19 will likely be followed by more such major events in India and across the world during our lifetimes.

Perhaps several more (keep a look out for our detailed blog on this in the coming weeks).

The Good News

The good news is that we humans are adaptive at our core. Our adaptability almost defines us in some ways. There has been a significant increase in the confidence levels around the world in our ability to survive and even to thrive in such situations and upheavals.

The Change

Businesses struggled with the pandemic restrictions by shifting to working remotely.

Of course, the forced and hurried shift led to tremendous frustration.

Though initially adopted hurriedly to tide over the immediate crises, the long-term benefits of remote work and a distributed framework to their people (and on costs) soon became very apparent.

Moving away from fixed costs allowed businesses to future-proof themselves and, as a bonus, ingrain flexibility into themselves. Governments too have recognized the sustainability and positivity of distributed framework (compared to, say, the burdens of a static centralized office space where people commute for hours to gather each day).

Reacting to Change

Unfortunately, some businesses were unable to favourably react to the challenge and found that setting up a distributed infrastructure in a controlled and sustainable manner is a daunting proposition.

Unfortunately in some cases, these challenges have forced businesses to attempt to revert to the earlier state and abandon the benefits of Remote and Hybrid Workplaces.

Accepting Change

Most businesses have, however, recognized the all-round long-term benefits – to costs, flexibility, revenues, the bottom line, work-life balance, access to talent, employee retention, improvement in health, environment … the list goes on.

Acceptance and appreciation for the ‘New Normal’ has thus set in quite quickly despite the significance of the change.

Adapting to Change

The businesses that have accepted the change also appreciate the chance to lock in these benefits. However, they recognize the need to identify and manage risks from these changes in a sustainable manner.

They have realized that technology is just one part of Remote and Hybrid Work. In many cases, it’s the easy part.

A distributed framework to support Remote Work, for all its tremendous efficiency and cost advantage, also require focus on aspects like data security, workforce management, systems, privacy, sustained availability, employment laws, corporate laws, supervision, morale, municipal regulations, expense management, finance and accounting, human resources and critically, the sustainability of smooth daily operations of the businesses.

And That Brings Us To Today

It is clear that the path forward are Remote and Hybrid Workplaces. But it is also clear that Remote and Hybrid Work cannot look anything like the hastily cobbled together patchwork we rushed into when the pandemic hit more than a year ago.

When the many needed changes are analysed, assessed and incorporated (into your processes, your paperwork, your financial structure, your organizational culture and indeed, your life), it will feel like truly having stepped into the next phase of the evolution of work. Today’s gray clouds point to a great tomorrow.

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