This story is from January 27, 2023

Balancing work from office & home

Balancing work from office & home
As we begin 2023 and start to think about the future of work, my memory goes back to the famous American sitcom television series, The Office, which depicts the everyday work lives of office employees at the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Navigating the tailwinds of the past couple of years and with it, the constantly changing dynamics of work, workplace, work culture, and workforce have defined and redefined how we envision the workplace of tomorrow.
These shifts have brought the world at the crossroads where reinvention of the Future of Work is inevitable.
If we look back at the enormous learnings from the past two years alone, flexibility and agility at the workplace are clearly the way forward. While the foreseeable future continues to be hybrid, many organisations are considering the benefits of returning to office. Most workplaces that are considered great places to work are those that go a step beyond to ensure that not only their company’s values are held intact, but that there is also a vibrant, strong, and open work culture. Ensuring this not only helps in motivating employees to unleash their maximum potential but also in driving innovation and moving the company toward attaining a collective goal.

Generational shift in workplace


Tomorrow’s workforce will be an increasingly multi-generational one. India is witnessing a higher share of Millennials and Gen Z as a percentage of the total population, while the developed economies are witnessing a shrinking younger generation. Mirroring this trend, the technology industry in India is becoming multi-generational. This pushed the share of Gen Z to 18-20% and Millennials to 68%-70% of the total tech industry’s employee base in FY22.
Interestingly, in our recent survey with Gen Z and Millennials, 85% of the Gen Z employees prefer complete work from office or in a hybrid work model, and around 79% of Gen Z are willing to spend more than two years in their first job provided employers provide them with the right value proposition. One thing is clear, for this younger generation, work-life balance means that autonomy, flexibility, and support go hand in hand. Organisations are going the extra mile to listen to this new-age workforce with a concentrated focus on providing learning & growth, redesigning benefits & office spaces, and flexibility in work models.

Reimagining office culture


However, for this younger generation, especially freshers, with little or no in-person face time with their colleagues and managers, it is difficult to stand out. It is even harder for them to learn the art of team bonding and collaboration while completing a project or activity in a remote work environment, resulting in dissatisfaction at work, stagnant career time, work-life imbalance, and burnout. This is where office culture plays a major role. A part of building the said culture stems from how well teams work in collaboration with each other, impacted by their physiological synchrony. In addition to the benefits of collaboration, the office also provides a sense of community that can be difficult to replicate when working from home.
Returning to the office, at least once or twice a week, provides employees and employers an opportunity to bond, and build meaningful relationships. The social interactions and connections that take place in the office space can evoke a greater sense of belonging for employees, creating unique energy at the workplace.
For employers, it also highlights the need to invoke a newer approach that recognises that work is no longer just a place, but an experience. Employers need to keep their employees engaged and connected, no matter where they are working from.
While flexibility and agility are poised to be the way forward for organisations, taking a gradual and comprehensive approach to ‘return to work’ will be the key to constructing the new playbook for workplace engagement and culture.

So, what does the future look like?


While we are not going back to the older ways of work, and the future will continue to be hybrid, there is still a need to crack the code of balance between how we envision offices of tomorrow. In the end, it will be up to employers and employees to work together to create a newer and better work model built on the foundation of shared trust, transparency, and flexibility, and the decision to return to the office will depend on the specific needs and circumstances of each employee and their employer.
Debjani Ghosh is president of Nasscom
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