A HYBRID model of remote and office-based work is likely to be the future way of working in Northern Ireland as attitudes on the role of the workplace have changed - possibly forever.
A survey by recruiters Hays has found that employees, liberated from their lockdown commutes, are enjoying greater flexibility in balancing their personal and professional lives.
And going forward, they prefer to still work from home some of the time and go to the office at other times.
It gauged the views of 13,500 people, including more than 520 in Northern Ireland, and found that by January two in five (41 per cent) of local employers expect their workforce to be working part-remote and part-office (in the UK as a whole, one in two prefer the hybrid model).
Over half (60 per cent) of organisations in Northern Ireland said staff are already returning to work in the office - much less than England's north east (72 per cent) and north west (68 per cent) but more than in London (44 per cent).
Many organisations in Northern Ireland (42 per cent) have returned to the office using split shifts, whereby teams alternate the days they work in the office and at home, or work one week at home and one in the workplace.
Other measures taken by organisations are a voluntary return (26 per cent) and staggered hours, where team members start and finish at different hours to avoid peak travel times (40 per cent).
Half (51 per cent) of the locally-based employers surveyed are planning to change their flexible working policies, over a third (35 per cent) are retaining communication and collaboration tools installed during lockdown, and 24 per cent plan to reduce their office space.
Hays' regional managing director John Moore said: “The health and safety of staff needs to remain the top priority when reopening offices and initially this ought to happen on a voluntary basis to take into account those who are unable to return for their own personal reasons.
“But companies need to look to the future now too. There’s been a seismic shift with demands for sustained flexible working and this looks set to continue on a scale never seen before.
“Our responses indicate that many people have had enough of working solely at home. The greatest demand is for a new hybrid model - a balance between office life and working remotely.
“As more organisations start to work under this arrangement, maintaining the company culture and ensuring communication is transparent needs to be a key consideration for employers.”
