During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, many organizations adopted the work-from-home model. After experimenting with this for quite some time, it’s highly unlikely that companies will go back to old working environments. This remote work culture is here to stay.
One survey reveals 82% of company leaders plan to allow employees to work remotely some of the time
Gartner
To adapt to these changes, many companies are trying to move into a hybrid work model. As a result, to achieve the hybrid work model best practices, decision-makers are considering how to redesign physical workspaces to enable this.
In this article, we will discuss how to improve this model. As well as the best practices many industries follow. And most importantly, how WP ERP can help to achieve the hybrid work model best practices. By following these, you can help your company and employees get the most out of this work model in 2023 and beyond.
Definition of Hybrid Work Model and Its Advantage
A hybrid work model is a mix of onsite office and remote work. It comes with flexibility and support for employees. A hybrid workplace creates an ecosystem of employees working from home, in coworking spaces, and in the office.
Employees typically enjoy more autonomy and better work-life balance. Therefore, they stay more engaged. Employers benefit by building a more productive, healthy, and stable workforce. In short, the advantages of this model make it more and more retention friendly for employers. Let’s see the advantages in short points –
- It attracts a more talented workforce
- Control over work hours and work location
- Minimize burnout
- Higher productivity if managed properly
- Improved work
As we move into this new era of hybrid work, the future of how we’ll work is yet to be determined. But the advantages of hybrid work are making it a new normal day by day.
Hybrid Work Model Best Practices with WP ERP
For the hybrid work model to run smoothly, employers must consider the situation of both onsite and remote workers. Many tasks, that need collaboration between colleagues are best performed in person. But the flexibility that a hybrid work model offers is attractive to people seeking a healthy work-life balance. To achieve that work-life balance, companies are steadily moving forward to a hybrid work model.
To do that, businesses need plugins like WP ERP. By using plugins like WP ERP, HRs and decision-makers can easily keep up to date with the work condition of all employees. Here are some of the best practices you can follow for the hybrid work model –
- Enable remote work for all employees
- Make important files available for all employees
- Train employees and managers to adopt the hybrid model
- Ensuring company-wide communication in a hybrid work model
- Evaluate employees based on skills, not location
- Manage assets for all employees with reimbursement
1. Enable remote work for all employees
One of the important parts of the hybrid work model is remote work opportunities. Without it, hybrid work is not possible. With WP ERP, you can enable remote work for all employees. For this feature, you will need the Pro version of it. Here’s a screenshot of the dashboard –
Now that we know how WP ERP can be used to handle a hybrid work model, let’s dive into the other best practices:
2. Make important files available for all employees
One of the most important things in the hybrid work model is to make sure all your employees have access to every work-related document. Companies need to take a remote-first approach. That way, all employees will be up to date with their tasks and roles.
To achieve this company-wide file-sharing approach, WP ERP has the perfect extension for this purpose called Document Manager. With this, anyone can access important files from anywhere. To keep privacy options, the admin can restrict access too.
3. Train employees and managers to adopt the hybrid model
Compared to the traditional work model, remote workers sometimes face an uphill struggle to be taken seriously. Managers may develop biasedness toward onsite workers. Which affects the confidence of remote workers.
To ensure this doesn’t happen, training managers to focus on outcomes rather than the location can help with this situation. With WP ERP’s Training extension, you can train the managers just the way you like.
Another problem that many employers face is: workers become idle. Because there’s no direct monitoring system, they might not focus on developing their skills and stay idle. To keep employees motivated and skilled, you can use training extensions to set the desired skill development courses. You can even track and monitor their progress.
4. Ensuring company-wide communication in a hybrid work model
Maintaining proper communication with the whole office staff is another challenge in the hybrid work model. It seems easier during physical office as all your employees are working in a single place. But in a hybrid model, you have to communicate with both onsite and remote workers.
If you are using WP ERP, then maintaining this communication is simplified with the SMS Notification extension. In an office, emergencies can happen at any time. During that time, you might need to reach your teammates or employees asap. Using this tool, you can reach your teammates when emails and system messages are not enough!
5. Evaluate employees based on skills, not location
Historically, managers have rated in-office employees as higher performers, despite little evidence of better results. If this happens when you shift to a hybrid model, remote employees may feel pressured to come into the office more often — or grow disheartened and leave.
At the same time, managers like to give performance evaluations face-to-face. This can happen due to the comfortableness or not having other ways to give an evaluation.
With WP ERP, You can make performance reports on the employee, set goals and add comments on performance right inside their profile. This way, managers can be discreet about it and properly evaluate employees based on their skills.
6. Manage assets for all employees with reimbursement
For HR and admins, managing company assets is one of the core responsibilities. For in-house employees, HR’s task is much easier as they are present with them. They can monitor and manage whether the assets are used appropriately.
For remote workers, this gets a little difficult. As they are working from different locations, handing over assets or monitoring is hard. So, they have to buy assets and wait for the company to reimburse them.
To simplify this asset management and expense managing process, WP ERP has tools exactly for this purpose. With the Asset Manager tool, HR can keep track of all the assets without any hassle.
In addition to that, you can use the Reimbursement tool to manage the office expenses from a single place where employees can request for reimburse payments.
Create a hybrid work model that’s built to last
For a hybrid work model to be successful, just having the right tools and infrastructure in place is not the final solution. If the company is not ready to change to adapt to this, then the model won’t be successful.
One in three leaders (30%) say the challenge they’re most concerned about when it comes to managing a hybrid workforce is maintaining their corporate culture.
Gartner
Adjusting to a new model is hard at first. But with the right mindset and the best practices of a hybrid work model, companies can thrive in any given situation nature can throw. For example, weDevs is the perfect example of companies that is successful in a new work model using WP ERP!
When you follow the hybrid work model best practices with WP ERP, you can fine-tune your current systems, and the easier it’ll be for your organization to achieve its goals and grow, despite the challenges of a split workforce. Which of these hybrid work model best practices will your organization try?
