With work from home extending to almost seven months now, 77% of Indian white-collar employees are finding remote work less enjoyable, with 49% missing office social life and feeling left out while working from home, according to a major global survey by Barco, a global leader in visualisation and collaboration solutions.
The study – which surveyed 1,750 employees around the world (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Australia, India and United Arab Emirates) through global research panel provider Dynata – found that only 15% of employees, globally, want to continue to work from home full-time after COVID-19 restrictions are lifted.
The Barco ClickShare study states that India is one of the countries with the lowest desire to work from home in the future, wanting only 1.8 days a week at home, on average. Employees are keen on a hybrid workplace model, where most of their time is spent in the office but they have the flexibility and freedom to work from home when it works best for them. Further, employees are looking for organizations to invest in a technology-driven hybrid working environment post-COVID-19.
Bring Your Own Meeting
The ‘Bring Your Own Meeting’ trend that was growing before COVID-19 – where employees wanted to use their own devices (Bring Your Own Device) and preferred conferencing solutions – has continued during the pandemic. Organizations must incorporate agnostic collaboration solutions like Barco ClickShare in the workplace as almost three in 10 Indians admit that their preferred video conferencing platform is often incompatible with the available in-office meeting room technology. 24% of the office workers often struggle to connect to a conferencing meeting room system, causing unwanted delays and frustrations.
Hybrid Workplaces for the New Normal
The study shows that most employees think the world is already returning to normalcy, post-COVID, with the number of remote-only meetings expected to drop significantly and hybrid meetings set to become the norm. Indian employees are most keen to continue working in large offices (62%) rather than moving to smaller ‘satellite’ offices once the COVID-19 threat has eased, with an overwhelming 88% of respondents wanting a designated desk to call their own. Indians also have the highest preference for formal meeting rooms (58%), the study reported. In this scenario, Barco’s Hybrid Work solutions enable bright outcomes.
Next-Gen Technology for Hybrid Workplaces
Employees have high expectations for technology-driven improvements in future meetings. Eight in ten Indian respondents predict that voice recognition tools, such as Alexa, Google and Siri, will become widely used in conferencing sessions. There is now a burning desire from employees to get back to normal, with the freedom, flexibility and facilities to adopt a better blend of home and office working.
Technology will be crucial to achieving this blend. To survive, rebuild and eventually thrive again in the post-pandemic world, businesses will need to invest in new technologies, redesign or at least reconfigure their office spaces, and give their employees the tools they need to work in the best way possible, no matter where they are located or how they choose to connect. Hybrid workplaces are the future and Barco is ready to support the trend with its suite of hybrid workplace solutions.
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