The idea of a more flexible approach to corporate life where employees work both remotely and in the office would have seemed unimaginable five years ago.
Property economist Francois Viruly jokes that if an executive had suggested this at that time they would have run the risk of being “chased out of the boardroom”.
But the hybrid working model — one of the biggest changes introduced in the wake of the pandemic — seems to be here to stay.
Viruly said SA and the rest of the world “will never go fully back” to the way things were before the pandemic. The problem was not simply about having to turn up at the office again, but about commuting to work amid rocketing fuel prices and traffic congestion.
“As a company you are better off putting that money in people’s pockets rather than making staff give it to oil companies, especially as households feel the inflationary effects on household income. Even if you make the office as attractive as you can, it still doesn’t resolve the issue of people sitting in a traffic jam every day.”
Nedbank, which employs 27,000 people in SA, formally adopted a hybrid model last year and says it is working well.
Group executive of human resources Deb Fuller said the bank has some of its staff “working from a Nedbank office or branch-based site, a portion of our staff who work remotely and another portion of our staff that will follow a blended approach whereby they move between working at home and the office”.
Fuller said the Nedbank workforce “has been extremely productive, happy, and engaged while working remotely” and that the bank is seeking ways to combine remote work with “a sense of connectedness to the organisation and with colleagues”.
More than 62% of its campus-based employees had been enabled to work from home and the bank had adapted its work model to facilitate agility and efficiency, she said.
Fuller said the group’s “optimal workplace distribution mix is expected to settle at around 60% at Nedbank premises and 40% as a mix of hybrid and permanent work-from-home models”.
Absa, which employs about 26,000 people in SA, said embracing a hybrid model had been informed by surveys and focus groups with more than 6,000 of its staff.
These showed “colleagues have a need to build and maintain deep and meaningful social connections and opportunities to connect and collaborate” and that “hybrid and flexible working practices have enhanced their quality of life and should be retained”.
Absa’s employees indicated they “would like to see a world of work emerging that combines moments of flexibility with moments of presence”.
There are huge benefits in making the hybrid working model successful
— Steven Teasdale, chief people experience officer at Discovery
With this in mind the bank is implementing a flexible model incorporating “site-based, hybrid and remote working, based on the role, team and business-unit requirements”.
The number of employees in offices still needed to be controlled to allow for social distancing and was “currently below the 50% capacity allowed in terms of government regulations”.
FNB, with nearly 40,000 employees, “continues to encourage employees to use our campuses for team engagements and to work remotely whenever possible”, said Lee-Anne van Zyl, CEO of retail estate management services and points of presence at the bank.
Van Zyl emphasises that while the bank’s investment in technology “enables most parts of our business to be flexible, we make a conscious effort to preserve our organisational culture”.
In an increasingly online world the bank invested in its premises to create “a workplace of the future” even before the pandemic, and this was accelerated during the lockdowns.
“We continue to see an increase in the number of employees that use our campuses, with roughly 34% average occupation of available seats.”
Standard Bank said it implemented a hybrid approach in April, and that “based on the nature of work people do, they could be office based, working remotely or work sometimes in the office and sometimes remotely”.
“Those that may work in a more flexible arrangement are required to work from bank offices for a minimum of eight days per month and are free to work remotely on other days.
“This is to facilitate better collaboration and interaction with colleagues in different areas. We are experimenting and learning with this new hybrid model and will adapt and adjust as we learn and know more,” said the bank, which has 29,000 employees in SA.
Steven Teasdale, chief people experience officer at Discovery, which employs more than 11,000 people in SA, said that at present “more than 75% of Discovery’s workforce is hybrid”, with typically a minimum of two days a week in the office and three days remote.
But Teasdale said different roles required different schedules, with some people, such as receptionists and certain call centre staff, needed in the office permanently.
He said the group was seeing “huge benefits in making the hybrid working model successful”.
“We would rather work towards focusing on how we can implement the hybrid workspace even better than returning to a blanket in-office working model.”
Teasdale said the hybrid approach “while consistently evolving, is working”.
“Where there is flexibility, our research indicates that our staff are more engaged in the hybrid model of working and they are finding that they have a better employee experience than those not in the hybrid model [fully in the office or fully remote]”.
PwC SA is focused on “empowered flexibility” — which forms part of a plan for its 5,100 staff launched in 2021.
Shirley Machaba, CEO of PwC SA, said “empowered flexibility is based on trust and a few principles that each team needs to agree on”.
“We look at our client and business requirements, then we consider the team requirements and within that framework our people individually decide and agree where, when and how they want to work to deliver on our purpose.”
She said staff were coming to PwC’s offices or specific client premises two or three days a week, with the group seeing a “steady increase” of people returning to the office.
Time in the office was important as “people do need interaction at our offices as certain things like coaching, development and team dynamics are so much better when there is in-person interaction”.
KPMG's 2,100 staff in SA work on a model based on “a hybrid approach of two days a week in the office or client attendance, depending on team and client requirements”, the group said.
“As a firm, we continue to support an agile work environment and will adapt to changes in circumstances where necessary. Ultimately, it is about striking the balance between business requirements and affording flexibility for our staff.”
Viruly said with so many large companies incorporating hybrid models that may have been decades in the making in the normal course of business, the pandemic had sped up the evolution of the business environment.
“It is very rare in life that we get to see the movie trailer of future work practices. While we may bounce back to some extent to where we were before the pandemic, we have now seen what work practices might look like in the future."
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.