After a 2020 of uncertainty, companies are beginning to rethink their work format and the flexible model takes center stage, where office attendance is combined with remote working. While working from home allows you to eliminate travel times and expenses, as well as order schedules with greater flexibility, the return to traditional work spaces improves relations between collaborators, and encourages cooperation and creativity.
According to the 2020 ManPowerGroup study “A New Normal, Better for All”, 79% of Ticos indicated that they want a clearer separation between work and personal life and 61% expressed concern about returning to the office due to the possibility of being infected by COVID-19.
The Pandemic altered the known work model, forcing people to telecommute every day of the week. Before the health crisis, some had never worked from their homes and it was only a few who did.
Benefits of mixed model
Although teleworking offers advantages, restarting the work routine outside the home also brings benefits, so a mixed model allows taking advantage of both modalities and responds to the needs of physical and mental health care that employees require.
Offices, for example, provide a dedicated space to focus on work, this place serves to increase productivity and creativity, without having to be aware of other tasks that at home that are impossible to ignore. Likewise, the office provides a separation between time at home and work, which is beneficial for mental health, because it allows, more easily, to respect schedules and rest times. In addition, coexistence between collaborators offers relaxation and cooperative more easily.
Collaborative spaces
“The office is a collaborative space, which is not only used to work, but to generate a social connection that allows the emergence of ideas for new projects or even for projects that are being developed. Sometimes these ideas arise in more informal settings, which is when people get together,” said Diana Rodríguez, General Manager of VMG Business Center.
To facilitate the implementation of this mixed work model, operators of flexible workspaces such as VMG Business Center have made their services more flexible to meet the needs of their different clients.
“Because the needs and expectations of people and companies have changed, it is essential that flexible offices consider that their spaces offer options for individual work, but at the same time have collaborative areas and areas for different types of meetings, as well as recreational places where you can work in a more relaxed way, in addition to having spaces to work outdoors,” explained Rodríguez.
Some of the alternatives that flexible work models offer are:
Physical offices: they are adapted to the specific requirements of each company offering different types of configuration, furniture and number of people; in addition to providing hybrid solutions to achieve distribution to work groups and that employees can work a few days a week from home and others from the office.
Meeting rooms: there are always people who, due to their business type, must have face-to-face meetings, therefore, the rooms have varied in their capacity in order to meet the 50% capacity requirement. On the other hand, in addition to increasing the number of rooms available, spaces were set up with the necessary equipment so that users can hold video calls with stable broadband Internet and the necessary equipment so that these meetings look very professional.
Not disappearing
Rodríguez pointed out that the offices as such are not going to disappear, despite the uncertainty that was generated at the beginning of the Pandemic: “after almost a year, there are many factors and studies that allow us to understand that although remote working has many benefits, collaborators need to return to their work spaces, that is why there is talk of hybrid models that contemplate the possibility of having the best of teleworking and face-to-face work”.
