Controlling and understanding hybrid working with edays

The Pandemic may be reducing; however, hybrid working is increasing.

A Ladders report published in December 2021 indicates that “25% of all professional jobs in North America will be remote by end of next year.” Some clearly love the flexibility of hybrid working, whilst others yearn to return to the office.

As we emerge from restrictions, people around the world are discussing their new hobbies, DIY projects, or extra time spent with family; while others toil away at a makeshift table in the corner of a room, unable to detach themselves from work. The pandemic didn’t come with a handbook and approaches to all aspects of life, but it forced everyone to take a good, hard look at our lives and re-evaluate our priorities.

Adapting to hybrid working will increase productivity by 4.6%, but can be a logistical challenge

It’s clear that for many industries working from home and hybrid working is here to stay, but then how do businesses effectively manage dozens of different working locations, ensuring staff are proactively engaged in work as well as collaborating with colleagues?

For industries that adapt to hybrid working, they’re expected to see an increase in productivity according to an NBER working paper published in July 2021. The report estimates a hybrid workforce will boost productivity by 4.6%, mainly due to the reduction in commuting .

Many companies are making serious moves to hybrid working long term but find themselves facing a logistical nightmare of how to manage business locations and hybrid workers whilst rebuilding business culture and team dynamics.

Working Locations lets you know who is where and when; and ensures compliance

At edays, we’ve evolved our platform and created a new feature “working locations” to enable companies to understand and guide the flow of hybrid workers as well as meet compliance regulations related to onsite staffing, keyholders, or first aiders.

Working Locations makes hybrid working easier for edays customers

Some edays clients adapted to the pandemic by recording working from home days as a new absence type. Albeit a creative and temporary solution to uncertain times, this impacts entitlement and reporting and meant those working from home cannot record a sick day.

edays recognised the need for a permanent feature and working locations enables users or authorisers to record who will be working from home, or who will be in a specific office, without the need for approval processes. It will not negatively affect planned and unplanned leave data, and staff can work from home and record a sick day so you can once again have great oversight on absence trends. The data in edays working location reports can also be used to see how hybrid practices are contributing to productivity.

While every user can have a default location, having a list of sites to choose from enables staff who move from site to site to provide visibility of where their time is being spent. This helps them plan face-to-face time with colleagues in seconds through edays ‘group calendar view’ where they can start to re-build rapport with teams they’ve not physically seen in a long time.

For many businesses the next year is crucial to ensure they avoid continued staff turnover and can focus on business growth. Working locations is how edays is helping businesses to simplify processes to support that business growth.

We encourage customers to utilise this feature to help track trends and improve the visibility of your workforce. edays customers should see our guide in the helpdesk on how to set up working locations.