Hybrid work culture is the way forward

Amid pandemic, hybrid mode of working has been accepted across industries. It's been almost 12 months of working from home. It is surprising how large corporations with thousands of people are managing operations run smoothly?

There has been a culture where manufacturing has been traditionally thought to be like 'work from the office' and IT companies are perceived as they can work from anywhere. "Amid the pandemic, hybrid mode of working has been accepted for working in the industry. Though for manufacturing you have to be on the shop floor, for that a lot of modifications are made like implementing a hybrid culture in all other areas like R&D, supply chain, corporate functioning and IT.

Employees in many companies are still working under hybrid conditions. One thing many feel that, though they will never get back to 100% 'back to work' setting, so they will have to ensure the best policies and approaches in this hybrid world. It is true that creating culture will be a new challenge in a hybrid model of work.

The days of physically reporting to an office every day of the workweek are not likely to resume once the COVID-19 pandemic is over. Knowledge workers have become accustomed to working remotely and splitting time between the office and home is expected to become the new normal.

There has been a rise of collaborative workplace solutions in a hybrid work environment. In the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, executives across the board shunned the idea of working from home. The common thought was that it would bring down productivity and quality of work. However, as most people in the organized sector were forced to work from home, businesses have realized two things — most meetings can be just an email or a call, and renting an office is one of the biggest expenses.

Just like work from home ruled 2020, the hybrid work model is set to be an important part of 2021 and beyond. It is not just tech giants like Infosys and Wipro, which have switched to a hybrid working model post pandemic by adopting permanent WFH for part of their workforce but many SMEs and manufacturing companies have also joined the bandwagon to thrive the crisis. The hybrid model, industry experts say, has been well-received in manufacturing and services sectors as well.

Deepak Sahu, President & CEO, VARINDIA