77% firms ready for hybrid work model, 43% claim employees willing to return to office: Survey

Around 77 per cent of organisations have revealed that they will provide their employees with the preference to choose their work model, whether it's in-office or work from home (WFH), showed a surved conducted by TeamLease, titled ‘Future-readiness of Organisations for a Hybrid World.’

The survey also stated that around 58.04 per cent of Human Resource (HR) leaders think that 2022 is the year offices will become completely in-office, while 43.46 per cent of organisations claimed that their employees want to return to work.

TeamLease’s report was based on a survey, which was administered to large organisations (53.87 per cent), startups (20.54 per cent), and SMBs (25.59 per cent) from industries ranging from technology to manufacturing to BFSI to FMCG to retail to health to automobile, to understand the readiness of organisations for adopting hybrid or virtual work models.

Ajoy Thomas, VP & Business Head for Retail, E-Commerce, Logistics & Transportation Vertical at TeamLease, said, “As the economy is slowly opening up and organisations are looking to welcome their employees back, they want to foolproof their workspaces and environment to accommodate the employee preferences in a way that also aligns with business sustainability and growth. Both can be balanced in the best way possible by redefining what productivity looks like, how it’s measured, and how employees are being engaged and retained in the long term. The survey observes all such nuances and captures future-readiness of companies to adopt hybrid or virtual work settings as the case may be.”

While mentioning the state of workspaces, the report said that 36.61 per cent of respondents claim to have office space on lease pre-pandemic, but have now moved to co-working spaces. On the other hand, 36.92 per cent of organisations said that they had office space on lease pre-pandemic but moved to fully-remote work settings without an operational office.

Around 21.42 per cent of organisations revealed that they didn’t see any change in their workspace status quo, while 5.05 per cent claimed they intend to stay a virtual-only organisation for the foreseeable future.

According to the survey, nearly 40.77 per cent of respondents find employee performance management and productivity measurement a significant challenge in virtual work settings, followed by strategy implementation to motivate, engage, and retain employees (18.45 per cent) and planning for office workspaces, e.g whether or not to lease fully-operational physical offices or to leverage co-working spaces (18.15 per cent).

The survey also reveals how organisations are planning to build organisational resilience, workforce health security and business sustainability by devising new strategies and evolving methodologies. It noted that 50.29 per cent of respondents agree on increasing their learning and development budget by up to 25 per cent in 2022, while 25.59 per cent say their margin will be anywhere between 25 to 50 per cent.

To sort out their employees' current challenges like planning for a hybrid work environment and infrastructure, 38.09 per cent of organisations are contemplating devising strategic approaches to mitigate, while 32.73 per cent are planning on learning and development initiatives in alignment with in-demand skills and increased business risks.