The first months of 2022 bring an unresolved question for leaders and organizations around the world: what is the ideal work model for the post-pandemic? Regardless of the profile or location of each businessthe answer to this question is crucial for the future and competitiveness of businesses, since the ability to attract, engage and retain the best talent depends directly on this answer.
The subject raises complex dilemmas, the answers to which seem to change all the time. Those leaders who opposed the home office in the first months of the quarantine began to defend it when they learned to lead remote teams and observed significant increases in their productivity.
On the other hand, the same collaborators who embraced the model, initially seeing in it an opportunity to rebalance personal and professional life, began to recognize great challenges related to mental health, concentration and quality of life.
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In this sense, and in order to outline strategies based on reliable data to obtain an answer to the question: what is the most appropriate work model for an increasingly complex and volatile world? WeWork and hsm, with the support of Egon Zehnder, conducted the study “Redefining work models in Latin America”. In this, the main factors that should guide organizational culture strategies during the coming months were collected.
The study that received responses from more than ten thousand leaders and executives from Latin America, with the presence of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. It showed the new priorities, demands and values of professionals, at the local level, facing one of the most challenging and creative periods of corporate reinvention in recent decades.
In Peru, the survey reflects the opinions of attendees, coordinators, directors, managers, founding partners, mostly from large and medium-sized companies. Of these, 86% affirm that the ideal post-pandemic work model is the hybrid. Because it allows partial interaction with their peers and spending time at home with their families. The best of both worlds.
Advantages and disadvantages of the different work modalities
With the arrival of Covid 19, the quarantine and various restrictions, companies have had to change and seek new ways of relating to their collaborators. In this sense, different forms of employment have been integrated, all of them with pros and cons:
- Remote work/home office
This modality was the most used in quarantine because people could not leave home. In this sense, more than 95% of those surveyed reported that among the main advantages of remote work are the reduction of travel time, reduction in operating costs and freedom in dress codes, as well as improving the productivity of collaborators. and equipment. However, as a disadvantage, it does not allow bonds to be created with the other teammates and bosses.
90% of the collaborators affirm that going to the workplace on a daily basis allows integration between areas and employees, the separation of personal life from work, better infrastructure of spaces and proximity in management with the teams.
On the other hand, among the disadvantages of the face-to-face modality, 94% confessed that they are losing time in moving from their homes to their workplace and vice versa. Additionally, 56% indicate distractions in the work environment and the management of personal and employee time.
The combination of both worlds. This modality of employment requires that the collaborators spend some days in the offices and others work from their homes. For this reason, since measures were taken to be able to return to the new normality, 68% of those surveyed work under the hybrid work modality.
This work method allows employees to have the appropriate infrastructure when necessary, consolidate the organizational culture and establish links with their colleagues, generating trust and empathy among the team.