In the future of work, employees hold the power

As a result of the pandemic, the power dynamic has changed in the workplace. Rewind nearly three years and it was employers that decided when, where and how their teams worked, but fast forward to today, and the tables have turned. It’s time for employers to rethink what work means, and recognise the importance of employee experience in a job market where staff have never had so much choice. For a business to succeed in the long run, employee happiness and the working experience will become crucial factors in retaining as well as attracting talent.

For most organisations, flexible working will become the default option for those jobs where it’s not imperative that the person has to be on site. In this new flexible world, employers hoping to attract top talent will find themselves moving further and further away from top-down management and rigid nine-to-fives, with technology enabling new and radical approaches to working, built on one key ingredient: trust. Employers may find themselves embracing ideas such as meeting-free days, or employees who set their own hours, or even a four-day week.

Research conducted this year at Zoom has highlighted that employees do not want to return to the old working world. It found that 69% of respondents wanted to decide where and how they worked. That figure rose to 85% among those who are already working remotely. Employers who choose to ignore this trend may well be in for a rude awakening, as 45% of employees said that they would look for a new job if they could not work where they want, rising to 55% among those already working from home. Remote workers are confident in their ability to deliver results while working from home, with 92% saying that their current working environment enables them to succeed.

Towards an asynchronous future

When it comes to delivering flexibility for employees, when they work could be just as important as where they work, with asynchronous working already high on the menu of employee desires. In a recent study conducted with 10,000 knowledge workers, more employees (93%) said they wanted flexibility in when they worked than wanted flexibility in where they worked (76%). The pandemic made employees realise that location wasn’t the secret ingredient that made them productive - and increasingly employees are realising that productivity doesn’t have to happen to a particular schedule either.

Asynchronous work is already becoming a reality in knowledge-based industries around the world. Technology is a key enabler of this, with meeting software allowing people to replay meetings after the fact, and offer input at that point. Going forward, technology will increasingly incorporate functions to allow teams to work together effectively, regardless of how separated they are by distance or time.

It’s also about company culture. In the early months of the pandemic, employees had to take the reins in a way they never had before. So it’s understandable that employees now expect greater autonomy, and to be trusted to keep that hand on the reins. Asynchronous work

allows employers to be more inclusive of people with families, people with caring responsibilities and people who have to travel abroad. Business leaders need to learn trust: rather than using monitoring tools to assess productivity, they need to listen to employees, ensuring that managers understand what they are doing and what they need, using surveys and town hall sessions to gauge employee happiness throughout the organisation.

The advantages of meeting-free days

Listening to employees has never been more important. Employees throw up useful and interesting ideas, such as having days without meetings to boost productivity. At Zoom, we found in one company survey that our colleagues wanted more meeting-free time to focus and plan: hence we introduced ‘Meeting-Free’ Wednesdays, giving everyone one day with no internal meetings. Research found that one meeting-free day per week can boost productivity by more than 35%. It certainly seems to make people happier, too. In a follow-up engagement survey, we found that 84% of us wanted to continue having meeting-free days.

We encourage teams to only have meetings where strictly necessary: for instance, for the start of a project, or for the discussion of sensitive information. We also follow the ‘Triple-A approach’, paying close attention to agenda, attendees and action items. Have a clear agenda for the meeting, ensure it’s only attended by people who need to be there, and aim throughout to create and assign action items, to minimise wasted time.

Experimenting with a four-day work week

An employee-led approach to how people want to work has been shown to be highly effective. Workers who are able to choose whether they want to work in the office, from home, or somewhere in between are happier, and more productive. In the future, could we all be embarking on a four-day working week?

Britain is currently host to the world’s largest experiment in the four-day working week, with more than 3,300 workers at 70 companies working just four days a week, on the same pay. Will the idea take hold? If employees demand it, there’s a reasonable prospect that a four-day week may become reality at many companies - although research this year has shown that while employees like the idea, flexible working is actually more important to them than having a shorter working week, with 45% saying they would choose a job which advertised flexible working, compared to 40% for a four-day week.

Employee are shaping their futures around their needs

Employee satisfaction is something that businesses can no longer ignore or dismiss as an extra perk. In today’s world, employee experience should be considered just as important as customer experience, and employers should set the standards high. For those businesses looking to retain and attract the best talent, they should empower employees to shape exactly how, where and when they want to work. This, combined with the right technology, will set organisations up for a successful future defined by flexible working.