The World Health Organization (WHO) has already declared the end of the covid-19 pandemicbut the impact that it left on the working market it will be permanent, at least that’s what specialists and collaborators hope. The schemes and work dynamics have changed in recent years, including the way of relating to and viewing employment.
Grisel Rebollar is a data analyst and has been working practically from home for three years. For her, her teleworking changed her life. “I took the bus and ‘My God’, it made me very angry because people push you, they come in bad, you also get angry, you come stressed… It became tedious,” he recalls the transfers when he had face-to-face jobs.
Since the health emergency was declared by Covid-19, she has a remote work that allows you to sleep a little more in the morning, spend time with your pets and stop investing in clothes to “go to the office”. After trying the home officeGrisel is very clear: “If they gave me a choice between going to an office or being at home, I prefer to be at home, I feel comfortable.”
“In terms of ways of working, Covid marked a before and after,” says Alejandra Toscano, general director of the DNE Consulting firm. Before the pandemic, the home office and hybrid schemes were rare, but now they are a reality in many of the companies. “We build a different normality of work”, she emphasizes.
In accordance with an investigation of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the pandemic “marked a turning point in the way of working” and in Latin America there is a wave of flexibility. In the region, the 70% of companies use at least one flexible work arrangement.
Gerardo García Rojas, career leader at Mercer México, assures that remote work “has come to stay”. However, making functions more flexible is not only a change of the place where you work. “When we talk about this we must answer five questions: Where is the work done from? What tasks are performed? When do they have to be done? How is it to be done? And who has to do it? In the past we focused on where, today we have to solve these five questions”.
Flexible models have become a new demand from employees as they prioritize more factors such as work-life balance. But people don’t just want change around where they work, according to a survey by ManpowerGroup, a 45% of workers want flexible hours and 36% want more days off.
From the perspective of Arleth Leal, CEO of Tutorel and specialist in Human Resources, the new ways of working entail a rethinking of objectives and the way of leading teams. “Leadership cannot be the same when we are working with these characteristics. In addition, another important challenge is to have a well-being-oriented vision, that is, how do we ensure that the employee at home has well-being with the remote scheme”.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS) ensures that the home office It has advantages for both companies and workers. For companies, this model can represent savings of 86,000 pesos per year for each employee; For employees, the scheme translates into benefits such as shorter travel times, reduced clothing and food costs, better quality of life, among others.
“I wouldn’t change it, but I would improve it”
Grisel would not change his work modality, but he acknowledges that the home office It is a scheme that can be improved. “It has been hard for me because you have to be aware, because you don’t even have lunch. When I was in the office, I finished work and how Fred Flintstone runs away, and that split mind quitting job I do not have it already. Now you stay connected longer ”, she shares.
From Arleth Leal’s perspective, “not only should work schedules and schemes be improved, companies also have to create better experiences for their retention and that is already part of a new work model, which must quickly adapt to the changes requirements and changes, because that worker who was sought before no longer exists today”.
Regardless of the labor scheme that is implemented, the specialists agree that one of the keys to ensure its effectiveness will be a design based on communication with collaborators and a focus on results.
“There must be clarity about what we have to do and why we have to do it. Today it is no longer doing for the sake of doing, our focus must be on results. If you have that vision, the collaborators themselves are capable of self-management and then you empower them to make decisions about their own activities”, says Alejandra Toscano.
In Mexico, adds Gerardo García, there is no organization that cannot rethink its work schemes and continue to be aligned with its business model, because flexibility goes beyond remote work.
Labor flexibility is not only home office
“It was a very big fear. She left home with all the blessings in the world; When I returned, I was afraid of infecting my family,” says Genaro López. During the pandemic, he worked for a public institution and never stopped going to the office. His occupation is one of the jobs that cannot be done remotely in the country and is equivalent to to 90% of the total labor market.
As the health emergency gave way to the home office and focused as virtually the only viable non-traditional job alternative, millions of people in the workforce have been left out of the wave of flexible working. In fact, according to calculations by the Bank of Mexico, only 10.6% of jobs in the country can be done remotely.
“The flexibility goes beyond telecommuting”, points out Gerardo García. For the specialist, the declaration of the end of the pandemic represents an opportunity to improve organizational structures. “The flexibility of administrative positions is not the same as line, but there are strategies and options.”
In the last report of the series The future of work in Latin Americathe IDB identifies at least six alternatives for flexible work schemes that do not involve remote work, which can be considered for positions with face-to-face activities, including hour banks or compressed weeks.
“There are many options, the problem is that they have not been explored to the level that we require. I would bet a lot on the subject of the Workdaysare extremely long, and the problem is that they are not so efficient”, says Alejandra Toscano.
In developed economies such as New Zealand, the four-day workday was a public policy to boost recovery in the context of a pandemic. In the United Kingdom, the massive experiment of this scheme produced interesting results such as increased productivity and decreased absenteeism.
The majority of the labor force in Mexico has activities that are not subject to remote work, and the Labor flexibility has not reached her. “For now I do not see a mechanism that reaches these workers, a solution has not been found so that they can participate in this change,” says Arleth Leal.
Regulation and culture, the main challenges
In Latin America, according to the IDB, there are already some flexible work arrangements beyond the home office, but some modalities still do not have regulation. “The measures taken during the pandemic were a step in the right direction, but enabling efficient organization of working hours is still a social debt in some countries in the region,” the institution indicates.
From Alejandra Toscano’s point of view, one of the challenges is that in some companies the legal maximum is worked without flexibility, because they have chosen to set the workload up to the limit, instead of increasing the workforce. The other side of the coin, she adds, is that they tend to be companies with big challenges like high turnover, absenteeism and lateness.
In this sense, Arleth Leal emphasizes that the extension of the flexibility to face-to-face positions it requires “analysis and investment”, but it is necessary to build more equitable companies. “He would have to be part of the decision and come up with schemes that also benefit them, even if they continue to be in person.”
In this regard, some Human Resources executives have recognized that one of the great challenges of flexibility is to extend it to operational positions, since teleworking it has covered a small number of the labor force.
Genaro remembers those days when staying at home was not an option for him or his colleagues and he is aware that due to the number of physical files, it was almost impossible to work from home. But he does consider that there could be more. flexibility in schedules and in the staggered return by areas. “The infections began when all the workers returned,” he says.
