Back to the Office: Post-Pandemic Workplaces

As well as the vast impact the global pandemic has had on our everyday lives, health and economic stability, it has significantly affected the way we work.

Corporate offices all over the world had to rush to adapt their business practices to compensate for lockdowns, quarantines, changing consumer demand and, in many cases, financial losses.  Employees had to embrace the realities of working from home, managers had to discover new ways to keep on top of performance and companies had to find virtual solutions to connect with staff and clients.

As we enter the latter half of 2021, many countries around the world have developed sufficient processes for offices to re-open and the time has come for owners and leaders to assess their strategies for how they want to work moving forward.  The priority is to cultivate the optimal environment for your employees, so that performance and productivity can flourish.  The more engaged your team is and the more efficiently the company operates will have a direct correlation on how it is viewed by your target demographic.  So how do you manage the return to work for your employees, your company and your clients? 

Communication and Safety

According to a recent US survey, more than two-thirds of workers are concerned about returning to the office. Whether those concerns are related to safety or anxiety over being back with a team, good communication is vital. Devising and implementing a post-covid communication plan with its own graphic design foundation can help to develop a common language that will unify and reassure employees, providing them with a friendly framework that sets out how your company will be managing their environment, their goals and their safety. When you pair this with the adoption of revised best practices for office interactions, customer services and feedback loops you create a space in which employees have excellent resources and support systems to draw on, clear guidelines on responsibilities and they also feel heard and free to speak up with concerns. This enables your staff to be more engaged, which has consistently shown to significantly improve overall happiness, productivity and performance, the assets that are more important than ever for any company right now.

A Hybrid Future?

It is impossible to deny that times have changed. The flexibility of remote working, as well as its sustainable productivity, have opened up possibilities for organisations of all sizes. Whether a company is looking to retain a more diverse talent pool and can recruit from further afield without the associated costs or is looking to reduce their asset costs by moving to a smaller office space, the current predictions do lean towards a more ‘hybrid’ model workplace. A series of leading CEO’s were recently asked about the evolution of office practices and a majority felt confident that a more balanced environment that includes both virtual and real world working is the most likely outcome. In a detailed Harvard Business Review article one researcher identified five different office ‘models’ currently being used in Australia:

  • Back to normal: a return to the pre-pandemic structure
  • The clubhouse: where employees work remotely and gather in the office for meetings or collaborations
  • Fully virtual: where everything is done from home and companies scrap their physical locations
  • Hub and spoke: where staff work from small, satellite offices closer to their home
  • Activity-based working: where employees balance remote working with being in the office and without an assigned desk, moving their position depending on the task at hand

How Serindipity Solutions Can Help

The key for businesses wishing to strength their performance is to identify which model is right for them, determine how best to implement necessary changes and evaluate their service offering to identify areas that could be improved for great client satisfaction. At Serindipity Solutions our extensive experience in operations, logistics and virtual services has given us a unique insight into how best to adapt business models to meet the objectives of the organisation. From more efficient customer service to responsive external communications to engaging virtual solutions, there are endless ways in which agility in processes could be beneficial in both the short-term and the long-term. Our team can help you analyse your business model and recommend relevant solutions that will help streamline productivity, improve performance and amplify your brand messaging in the new arena of the 2021 marketplace. A selection of services we can provide include:

  • Consolidated Return to Work Campaigns to include event milestones & communications
  • Hybrid teambuilding solutions
  • Graphic Design for key messages
  • Gamification and fun office activities for teams

If you would like to talk to Serindipity Solutions about help with your communications, operations or virtual services get in touch today on john@serindiptyevents.com or 050 5944226.

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