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The fact that employees go to their offices daily generates a considerable level of stress.
The Covid-19 pandemic leaves a learning curve for companies to integrate the flex-office into their offer of benefits.
Most recruiters in Mexico classify working at home as an efficient work scheme.
Braskem Idesa opted for resilience thanks to the pandemic and equipped its employees with a kit so they could adapt to the flex office scheme.
It has been a couple of years since the Covid-19 pandemic arrived to affect the lives of millions of companies and their respective workers, leading some of them to find in the home office a good alternative to reduce the risk of contagion among its ranks, safeguard the integrity of its work team and adapt to the new demands of employees, a result that is here to stay in the coming times.
Despite this, not all organizations and employees had the “benefit” of moving to this modality, either due to lack of infrastructure or simply because their field did not allow it; however, the study carried out by Statista where it shows the percentage of employees who worked from home during confinement in Mexicoreports that 73 percent of their respondents had the opportunity to work from the comfort of their home, while 27 percent of them could not.
The adoption of this modality entailed various factors to consider, since some employees made it known that this scheme was not entirely in their favor, one of the reasons being that their working hours managed to be extended and the demands of some companies and their leaders prevented them from carrying out their right to disconnect from work, thus considerably increasing their stress levels.
The study on work stress in Mexico carried out by the Internet Association in a joint effort by OCCMundial, showed that a third of the workers who increased their working hours due to the home office were afraid of receiving reprisals for exercising their right to digital disconnectionshowing that some organizations did not know how to adapt well to this new job opportunity.
Despite this, some other companies found in the pandemic a way to strengthen themselves and increase the loyalty of their employees by offering this work scheme, which is here to stay as a new and attractive benefit in the professional field. This because the home-office offered endless benefits to explore; among them, a reduction in stress when employees go to their respective offices, a decrease in expenses by not going to them, the fact that it can become more stressful to work from these spaces, among other characteristics.
Likewise, the results of this modality were shown to be positive in most cases, since the study of Measures Covid-19 Recruiters, shows that 28 percent of recruiters surveyed about the effectiveness of working from home they rated this as very effective, while 65 percent said it was effective and only 7 percent of them said it was not very effective.
Going to offices every day and working 100 percent from home can become exhausting for employees, so the hybrid scheme or “flex-office”is shown as a good alternative that could be the future of employment as we know it, thus offering greater productivity, both for companies and employees.
According to research conducted by Harvard Business School and co-authored by Harvard Associate Professor Prithwiraj Choudhury:
“Mid-hybrid work is plausibly the sweet spot, where workers enjoy flexibility and yet are not as isolated compared to their predominantly home-based peers.”
“The intermediate hybrid solution could offer the best of both worlds.”
Taking into account the effective vaccination process and the decline in Covid-19 cases in Mexico, in recent weeks different companies have chosen to return to their offices again, giving a warm welcome to their employees (as was the case of C&A, who caused the envy of some on social media with their warm welcome); however, some of them have managed to learn and adapt to the new opportunities that the pandemic left in its wake, as well as the new demands of professionals, that is, the flex-office.
Given this, the petrochemical company Braskem Idesa has chosen to provide a kit to some of its employees to start working under the flex-office schemeproviding them with a keyboard, a chair, a backpack, notebooks, pens, an anti-stress device, an extension to connect their electronic equipment, among other products so that their workers can adapt a micro office from the comfort of their home and carry out their work effectively.
The human resources area will be essential in the coming years to increase employee loyalty to their respective workplace, a fact that can boost the offer this type of kits that allow them to have a warm interaction between employee / company and giving them the opportunity to work under the flex-office scheme, being a good employer branding strategy which will certainly allow them to attract the attention of future talents.
We also found an example of this a few weeks ago when the company Mi Secre, with its offices in Miami, chose to offer a welcome kit to its new employee who was in Venezuela, but this was not an impediment for the brand to show the importance it has towards its employees by sending them some gifts by parcel and offering the home-office work scheme (or flex-office in case they decided to move), managing to attract the eye of other professionals who now seek to join their work team.
Companies have the opportunity to use the lessons learned from the pandemic in their favor to expand their offer to employees and thus achieve effective employer branding, which will increase the loyalty of their workers and attract future talent.
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