June 4, 2021 4 min read

The Covid-19 pandemic forced the vast majority of companies to adopt the home office as their new work model. Although at first it represented a huge challenge, now both employers and workers have adapted to this scheme. However, data from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) reveal that only 5.7% of the million 873,564 businesses in the country intend to keep remote work permanently . So what are the back-to-office hybrid work options?

According to the ‘Survey on the impact generated by covid-19 in companies’ (ECOVID-IE), fewer companies will bet on the total home office. In August 2020, 7.6% of employers considered this modality as a permanent work model, and now there is a decrease of 1.9 points.

“When the pandemic was 100% all the companies that could migrate to the home office. As more people are vaccinated and the economy picks up, they will return to certain face-to-face activities, without abandoning teleworking. This will continue in a smaller proportion, but greater than that which was had before the health emergency , “said Siegfred Seedorf, professor at the Faculty of Economics at LaSalle University, as quoted by El Economista.

The most reluctant to work remotely are SMEs (10.8%) and micro-businesses (5.1%). However, 30.4% of large companies do consider it as an option, although with a reduction of 3.5 points compared to what was reported ten months ago.

Regarding staggered schedules , to avoid overcrowding at work centers, 9.5% of companies expect to maintain this dynamic, compared to 17.5% that contemplated it last August.

Companies will bet on hybrid work schemes

Taking into account that 1 in 3 workers is willing to resign if they are asked to return to the office , companies have to find a way to reconcile both perspectives.

Therefore, 6 out of 10 companies consider implementing hybrid work schemes , that is, those that combine teleworking with face-to-face work, according to the survey ‘ The emergence of the hybrid workplace’, prepared by Cisco .

“This research shows that as the pandemic subsides, employees will continue to work more and more from home , with 58% indicating that they will work from home for eight days or more each month,” the survey noted. “Further analysis reveals that this change is similar for all levels of seniority, from front-line workers to executives,” add the specialists.

#Health What the pandemic did not achieve, the office did? By @ConversationUS https://t.co/fOqIZog48v

– Entrepreneur Mexico (@SoyEntrepreneur) June 2, 2021

Among the labor modalities that could be established, the following stand out:

• Face-to-face work with partial home office . The proportion between the two will depend on each company or area manager, according to their needs. It could be a face-to-face day and the rest from each, or vice versa, with all the intermediate variables.
• Flexible schedules. Workers could choose their hours based on parameters determined by the employer: covering hours, reaching goals, etc.
• Compressed weeks. Similar to flex hours, this variant consists of work the same weekly hours, but do it in fewer days.
• Job sharing. It is about dividing a full-time job into two part-time jobs that can be covered by two people. Before the pandemic, several studies concluded that a significant percentage of employees would prefer to earn less money in order to have more free time.
• Banks of hours. This scheme is the least appealing for someone who is already used to the home office. Here the worker accumulates the extra hours that he has worked to use as free time.

And for you, if you are given the choice between home office, one of the hybrid work schemes or quit, what would you prefer?

With information from El Financiero .