After the COVID-19 scenario, employers started acknowledging the importance of hybrid work models. Employees had to work from home for their own safety. Remote hiring too started when the offline recruitment process was not possible.
However, the workforce moved one step ahead. They have experienced remote working consistently for more than 2 years now. What they need more is a hybrid working model. In this style, workers or employees can return to the office whenever they like.
More importance is on the processes and completed project. For that, employees value time management to save commute time whenever they want to work from anywhere.
However, in this scenario, companies also have to learn to prepare their offices for a hybrid work culture. That’s why this blog teaches you steps to equip your workplace for hybrid employees. This way, tracking and tracing workflow and workforce efficiency is smarter too.
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5 Steps Helping You Equip Your Workplace For Hybrid Employees This Year:
Install an Intranet for extending your collaborations.
Employees can be from anywhere. They might sit in the office cabin or work from a beach. But what matters is that they have the right tool or platform to connect with one another. That’s why your firm needs a stable, reliable, interactive and intuitive intranet.
uKnowva Social Intranet is one such example. Using this tool, employees can connect, co-create, and collaborate. That is from anywhere. They need not be in the offices only. This streamlines the way they communicate.
By engaging in polls/surveys, team chat groups, and meetings on the intranet, employees deliver projects on time. This practice also welcomes more transparency between teams.
There is then lesser or maybe not even a single scope of miscommunication. Because, most teams are on the chat or the intranet to connect and resolve concerns.
Therefore, that’s just one reliable and smart way to equip your workplace for hybrid employees. Plus, the intranet setup cost will be affordable for small and growing companies.
Focus on video conferencing calls.
Try and connect with the entire organisation or team on the video conferencing feature. This is again available on the Intranet tools you get online. Again, the best example here is uKnowva Social Intranet to connect with teams virtually on video calls.
Video calls ensure teams see each other. There must be as minimum isolation as possible for every employee – remote or in-office. With video calls, trust increases and so does respect for each team member without thinking of their work location.
For example, two members in the office and one remote employee can still talk as normally as possible on a video call.
Flex-desking system for employees coming to the office.
That’s an interesting way to equip your workplaces for hybrid employees. With flex-desks, you can invite employees to book their desks whenever they plan to work from the office. This way, no single employee would own the desk.
The desk is the office property and owned for the day by the employee who books it. This way, offices can manage and optimise their available resources and furniture quite effectively.
Also, following the flex-desk means that no desk would be cluttered every day.Instead, employees will only get their needed stationery items to the desk and return with them later.
It can happen regularly. But for these creative and innovative ideas to optimise your office space for next-gen workers, there has to be a platform. With workforce management software, that’s possible.
From there, workers can directly book their desks for the day. Even their team members can see if the admin allows the availability of the desk at the office. Accordingly, other workers can plan their day for coming to the office.
Use an office map for remote employees to find their way indoors.
The concept of wayfinding is fairly new and exciting in the world of hybrid work models and employees. Managers or employers can paste an office map on the HRMS like uKnowva. Remote workers can refer to that map whenever they plan to step into the office.
Using this map, they can gain information on different rooms: storage, printing, security, washroom, common room, cabins of different bosses, etc.
So each employee saves their time after using this map. It can also be physically posted in the reception area of the office. From there, new or rarely visiting employees verify where to go and how to reach their destination.
Actually, using these maps will also make each employee self-reliant and independent in the office. They wouldn’t have to ask HR or their teams to help them out. Otherwise, they can click the map to access it on the go.
Make a roster for employees.
Empower and encourage employees to try a hybrid work model to uplift their mood. This is possible if you plan a schedule for them before the day. For this, you might need the consent of the team members.
Nonetheless, you can share the coming-to-office days with your team. Get their votes on the count of their availability of the set dates. Accordingly, make changes to the schedule. Test this planning for a week or a month to see how it affects employees’ morale and efficiency.
This planning is a team effort. Members would need to be on the same page. They also understand each other’s life commitments. Some employees might not be available for a few days to come to the office.
In this case, others would have to compensate and return. All in all, it can be an ongoing activity to test the synergy and harmony between teams.
But reporting managers have to make targets for each week or day for office headcount. So it will make this hybrid work model more interesting and challenging to accomplish. That’s why this is one of the amazing steps to equip your workplace for hybrid employees.
Conclusion:
Companies must learn how to welcome hybrid employees because that norm is here to stay after COVID-19. Employees want flexibility in their working hours and locations. In the end, their valuable input matters. That’s why it’s important even for your firm to learn to equip your workplace for hybrid employees. Whether it is in 2022 or beyond, it hardly matters. Keep up with the trend, and nurture talent the way they deserve.
