The future of work

Is hybrid work the future?

Work today isn’t what work was like five years ago. The pandemic changed the way we work and pushed us to reinvent the way we do things. Workers started working from home, a setup that many enjoyed and would continue to do to some extent. But is that a good thing? With new times, come new challenges: 62% of workers struggle with finding the information they need. With new times, come new expectations: 82% express a desire to use AI to help them find that information. But is that possible? Let’s talk about numbers, and find out if hybrid work is the future, or already a thing of the past.

“62% of workers struggle with finding the information they need.”

The pandemic changed a lot of things. In the workplace context, this meant that working from home became the new normal for many. A lot of people adjusted quickly and seemed to enjoy it - a study in Sweden from 2021 shows that a staggering 90% of those who worked remotely during the pandemic wanted to continue to do so at least once a week.

During the pandemic, nearly half of the working population in Sweden was working from home to some degree, and many for the first time. There was, however, one group in particular that already had some experience in the matter: In 2017, it was noted that 90% of Swedish workers in the IT and communication sector worked from home to some degree, and every fourth person did so daily. To put it in perspective, across all professions at that time, only about a third reportedly worked from home to some extent. Only one in ten did so daily.

This suggests that knowledge workers, particularly in the IT and communication sector, were early adopters and pioneers of the hybrid work model. They demonstrated that with the right strategies and support, remote work can not only function but thrive.

How to optimise a hybrid workplace

So how did the pandemic change our attitude towards working from home, and what effect did it have on productivity rates?

More studies are still needed to fully grasp the impact working from home has had on productivity and employee well-being, but the first reports are making their way into the world and they tell different stories. Some reports connected drops in productivity between 8% and 19%, while others showed productivity gains of 13% and even 24%, according to this article in The New York Times.

Is there a reason behind these mixed results? According to Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford and a prolific scholar on remote work, the numbers we are seeing might mirror the employers’ strategic approach to remote work. According to Bloom, the quality of the work and productivity are closely connected to employers’ actions, referring to how well-trained managers are in providing the necessary support to their remote employees.

Strategy matters

So what does a strategic approach mean? In general, many managers want to see their employees in the office for about 3-4 days a week. This is to support innovation, employee motivation, and maintain company culture.

To make the most of a hybrid work model, it’s important to coordinate on-site workdays so that employees working on the same team will meet in person on the same days.

Not only is this deal working well for employers, but is also preferred by employees.

With this setup, employees find that they can use their remote days for tasks where support from their team isn’t as needed, allowing them to fully immerse themselves in a task. Microsofts annual work trend index shows that 68% struggle with finding time to work uninterrupted, with ineffective and unnecessary meetings being the biggest time thief of them all. Working undisturbed allows the worker the kind of deep focus that is hard to come by in an office with other people, noise, and interruptions. In the hybrid workplace, meetings and more actively collaborative tasks are simply scheduled for in-office days. Additionally, time and energy are saved by less commuting, a win for the employee, employer, and the planet!

Give the people what they need

Another prerequisite for successful hybrid workplaces is that employees have relevant competence in various digital tools that enable remote work. During the pandemic, there was a significant surge in online communication which placed higher demands on the digital tools we use. Features in digital conference software were refined, and digital collaboration tools such as Figma and Slack became increasingly common in companies.

Utilising these kinds of tools is a big game-changer for companies that are looking into implementing a hybrid workplace. Furthermore, having access to the company's knowledge base becomes a necessity to be able to carry out work, regardless of where you are.

Not being able to find the information you need is the fifth biggest disturbance for workers, according to Microsoft's annual work trend index, and 62% of respondents in the study say that they spend too much time searching for information during the workday. This means that a company with 500 employees has about 310 people wasting time every day trying to find what they need to properly do their work.

The problem of not finding what is needed is notable when asked about AI. The need for AI is generally high, with 86% expressing a desire to use AI that can help find the right information. By using smart search, users can easily filter through the noise and find what is relevant.

For a new way of working, we need new and better tools - and that is why we built NVOY. NVOY is a knowledge management platform built to facilitate and enhance the user's workflow. We help you find what you need, no matter what you are looking for.

This is how we manage knowledge in the future

Video och Audio

NVOY understands audio files and videos. By transcribing and then analysing the text, users are allowed to find specific content efficiently without checking timelines or skimming through countless files. Basically, find anything that’s buried in speech rather than the title.

Text documents and information

NVOY analyses and categorises text, including text in images which makes scanned documents entirely contextualised. By extracting important keywords NVOY makes it easier to find what’s relevant and useful to the user.

Categorisation and labels

NVOY offers a keyword extraction algorithm and a custom categorisation engine to help organisations identify specific categories in their documents. This allows for efficient resource reuse and tailored content matching for different campaigns.

Image recognition

By using image processing, NVOY analyses and makes the image's content easy to find. This feature enables users to easily find visually matching images based on specific keywords, saving time and effort in searching through folders or documents.

Want to know more about how NVOY utilises machine learning? Read more here!

Big challenges require big solutions

Knowledge workers, specifically in the IT and communication sector, showed early that working from home was a realistic setup that didn’t make companies spontaneously combust. Research indicates that there is every possibility to have a thriving hybrid company by using the right strategies. Because of this, we believe that hybrid work is here to stay. Working from home a few days every week makes a big impact on employee happiness, brings better focus, and creates a better, more effective environment for collaboration and social tasks when working on-site.

And let’s not forget that by empowering employees with the right tools and instructions there is a lot to gain. A hybrid workplace is not possible without the ability to communicate and collaborate remotely, equipping the company with powerful tools such as NVOY is key.

What do you think? Do you prefer to work remotely, hybrid, or fully on-site?

Interested in finding out more? Check out these articles for further reading:

Why working from home will stick

PDF. Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Steven J. Davis

Forward Thinking on how to get remote working right

Podcast with Nicholas Bloom and Michael Chui

Microsoft annual Work Index: Will AI fix work?

Microsoft’s research on AI in the workplace.