2021: The year India Inc began embracing hybrid work 

The year 2021 has been one of starts and stops in the world of work. Just as companies began calling employees back to office, confident of having turned a corner in the pandemic after the first wave, a more brutal second wave in April-May shook almost everybody in some form. Several companies put their back-to-office plans on the backburner again. 

While the latter half of the year offered some respite for organisations to test out different formats of in-person, remote and hybrid work suited to their needs, several organisations have taken the foot off the pedal on their return-to-office plans again as we turn the page on 2021, courtesy the Omicron variant and a year-end lull in work. 

The lessons learnt over the past 20 months working either remotely or in a hybrid model to evade the lethal and mutating virus has brought widespread consensus among organisations that the future of white-collar work is hybrid. 

“As we approach the end of 2021, organisations across the globe have understood the importance of the hybrid workspace and are preparing their teams for this new normal.  Many studies have clearly shown that most employees want a hybrid and flexible approach where they are given the freedom to work both from home and from the office. Employees have become the focus of every work strategy/ approach as they look for an environment where they can be most productive and feel most mentally balanced,” said Sameer Raje, General Manager & India Head, Zoom Video Communications.
 
“One big change has been the way we work. New ways of working and engagement, policies, and enablers, how and what we evaluate – measures of performance, soft skills like empathy and trust will all be tested differently in this new digital environment,” according to PepsiCo India Chief Human Resources Officer Pavitra Singh.

Business continuity and productivity were maintained throughout the year, as evidenced by the good financial showing of several companies this year. Further, the average hike companies plan to give out in 2022 are also at the pre-pandemic levels of more than 9%, according to surveys by HR services firms Aon and Willis Towers Watson. With digital tools also to bank on, a few organisations are rolling out clearer policies for hybrid work. For instance, FMCG giant HUL has announced two flexible work models for its employees and gig workers.
 
Skill assessment platform Mercer Mettl’s CEO Siddhartha Gupta expects to see an increase in the formation and implementation of workplace guidelines and policies based on employee feedback. “The combination of the pandemic, ‘Great Resignation’, and the digitisation process that took place within that period has forever changed the way we define work. The era of ‘9 to 5’, ‘Monday to Friday’ is coming to an end. 2022 will be the year of digital nomadism where employees will have the freedom to customise their work and career experiences with their well-being at the centre of it,” he said.

He added that fluid hierarchy and organisational structures will also come into play with an emphasis on transparency and accountability. “As the modern workforce is digital and distributed across the world, productivity will be re-conceptualised as the concept of equating it to the number of hours worked becomes outdated,” said Gupta.

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