Work After Lockdown in UK – Working from home under lockdown has disrupted norms

The Work After Lockdown project explores how crisis-driven working from home activates wider change in how people want to work and how organisations respond.

Working from home under lockdown has disrupted norms and thinking around the need for office presence.

• People have adapted quickly and worked well from home. Productivity is good. At the same time there have been challenges, and parents/ carers and those with people management responsibilities are feeling the pressure.
• Employees miss the sociability and benefits of collaboration offered by working in shared workspaces. This could drive a surge back to the office when lockdown restrictions ease and confidence returns, particularly amongst younger people.
  Employees feel they have benefited from flexibility to organise their tasks, and discretion to make decisions about when they do their work from home.
• Latent demand for permanent flexible working pattern changes has been unlocked. Employers must be ready to meet that demand with well-defined positions on hybrid and flexible working for every job role for the existing workforce and new recruits.
• Training gaps remain around the new people management skills needed to support employee well-being, and to sustain performance and productivity among teams working remotely. This is a skills deficit that needs urgent attention.
• Flexibility and discretion coupled with a new relationship of trust between employer and home-working employee, are the foundation components of good work7 that should shape new models of work after lockdown.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story @ Work After Lockdown