Page 26 - BusinessWest February 6, 2023

EMPLOYMENT >>
Home Sweet Home
As Employers Fret over Remote Work, Hybrid Schedules May Be Here to Stay
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
[email protected]
ake no mistake, Meredith Wise says
— employers miss those bustling offices where all their employees used to come to work.
And after almost three years of remote work — during which the practice evolved from a temporary necessity to a ubiquitous reality — businesses are definitely grappling with what it
all means, and whether they can slow the remote train down.
“A lot of businesses would like to have people back in the office,” said Wise, president of the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast. “They’re strug- gling a bit with communication, with employee relations, and with staying in touch with people and knowing what’s going on with them.
“The idea used to be that people would come in, and you’d get a sense of how their night went, how their morning was going,” she added. “With Zoom communications, you just don’t get that same feel- ing. A lot of companies are feeling like they’re los- ing that personal connection with employees.”
Even some of the largest employers feel that way, as Walt Disney Co. workers found out in a recent internal memo from CEO Bob Iger, who is calling on all workers to spend at least four days a
26 FEBRUARY 6, 2023
week in the office, starting March 1.
“In a creative business like ours,” Iger wrote,
“nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physi- cally together, nor the opportunity to grow profes- sionally by learning from leaders and mentors.”
Still, Wise noted that many local companies seem to be moving in the opposite direction, by continuing to embrace hybrid schedules. “They’ve found productivity can be better when working from home remotely, where people don’t have any of the distractions of being in an office, and I think that hybrid model is going to stay.”
Amy Roberts, executive vice president and chief Human Resources officer at PeoplesBank, agreed.
“We implemented a flexible work-arrangement policy in the midst of COVID, and we still have a lot of people working hybrid, with some time in
the office and some time working from home,” she told BusinessWest. “It really depends on the area a person works in and what the business needs are. We have a couple fully remote workers; we actu- ally hired a person out of Illinois who works fully remotely.”
Like Wise, Roberts said it’s easy to see why remote work is appealing, from the elimination of commuting time to creating a focused work envi- ronment. “I think the flexibility of it is really help- ful to people in terms of work-life balance. Or they
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“A lot of businesses would like to have people back
in the office. They’re struggling a bit with communication, with employee relations, and with staying in touch with people and knowing what’s going on with them.”
BusinessWest