What the modern workplace looks like is rapidly changing, in many ways beyond recognition from the 5-day office week of a decade ago.
For both employees and businesses, new working styles offer both possibilities and challenges, so it’s important to know the pros and cons of flexible working for all parties, before you make any seismic changes within a company.
Here, we’ll analyse exactly what are the advantages and disadvantages of remote working, hybrid working and flexitime, and compare the findings surrounding these with the statistics around traditional in-office working. Discover which is going to be the best work style for you—as an employee and a business owner—and perhaps find new working solutions you may not have considered before.
Read on to take a deep-dive into the data and debate surrounding:
01 - What Does the Future of Work Look Like?
What we consider as a ‘normal workplace’ has completely transformed within the space of only a few years. According to a report by WISERD, just 4.7% of employees worked from home prior to the 2020 lockdown. By 2022, the OFS was reporting that this had jumped to a quarter of employed Brits working remotely at least some of the time.
The COVID pandemic certainly hastened the move towards remote working as common practice, but the trend had been building for some time before, albeit in a more alternative work style sort of way. Online collaboration tools, chat messaging and video calls are now considered to be effective stand-ins for in-person communication, and in many cases have been found to boost productivity and offer more innovative ways of collaboratively working.
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How will people work in the future? While we can’t say for sure, the nature of work in the UK is likely to be shaped by several things—what workers want, what companies want, technology and travel.
Between employees and employers a push-and-pull effect of workers’ rights and company ambitions is becoming even more fraught as workers demand more flexibility, with businesses still unsure about how this will impact on productivity and revenue. Corporates like Amazon are reportedly ‘taking a risk’ by bringing staff back into the office on a 5-day basis, while many other businesses are offering more flexible working options to retain and entice workers who could quite easily find hybrid work elsewhere.
Two other key factors are at play—the progression of remote-working technology, and the willingness (or otherwise) of employees to travel to office locations. While video calls have remained largely unchanged since the pandemic, other tech has emerged to plug the gap between face-to-face working and remote collaboration. Improved messaging and project platforms allow a more accurate simulation of in-office worklife, and they seem likely to only improve further in the next few years. This in turn is likely to further decentivize employees to commute to offices, or perhaps have the side effect of allowing workers to live further away from the office, travelling a further distance to work fewer times in the week or month.
With so many possibilities and factors affecting the future of work, it pays to be plugged-in to the conversation. Get to know more about the current debate and statistics surrounding hybrid work, remote jobs, and the UK’s 4-day work week, before you make a decision about your own business or work style.
02 - Hybrid Working
The definition of hybrid working is employees being able to work some days of the week (or month) in an office setting, with other days working from home or remotely.
What Are the Advantages of Hybrid Working?
Hybrid working jobs have become more desirable by employees seeking a better work-life balance, and are particularly beneficial for working parents with childcare reponsibilities, workers with long commute times, or employees who would benefit from some time out of an office setting during the working week, such as autistic workers or employees with a disability.
In an NHS survey of disabled staff in 2020, 84% wanted to retain at least some form of flexibility and remote working post-pandemic.
For employees more generally, hybrid working is highly sought after for its lifestyle balance benefits. According to the Candidate Experience Report by Greenhouse, 77% of employees would be willing to walk away from their job if their company’s hybrid working policy was to be reversed, and 59% of those surveyed are more likely to choose an employer that offers remote work opportunities than one that doesn't.
What Are the Disadvantages of Hybrid Working?
Although there are numerous positive aspects to an office-home split, hybrid working disadvantages include challenges with communication—both within teams and between employees and employers—and the potential for employees to feel isolated and too far removed from the culture of their workplace. A recent Forbes survey found that 48% of employees agreed that hybrid working made it harder to work with others, and 26% remarked on there being more distractions when working from home.
For employers, a significant challenge for implementing hybrid working is maintaining a good flow of communication and ensuring the technology and infrastructure is in place to keep workers motivated, engaged and in touch.
Hybrid working rules are, at the moment, determined by the employer in the UK, though this may change in the future, with the unveiling of the Employment Rights Bill in October 2024 as a likely precursor to further support for a hybrid working model in the UK.
03 - Remote Working
What is remote working? Also known as work from home (WFH), remote working is an arrangement that allows employees to work outside of an office setting, perhaps at the employee’s home or in a coworking space. Compared to hybrid working, remote working is usually almost completely undertaken away from a traditional office space.
What Are the Advantages of Remote Working?
For employers, remote working is a great option for keeping overhead costs down, as the expenses of running an office space are either reduced or completely eradicated. It is also possible to hire staff from different countries, giving employers access to a much wider pool of talent.
The pros of remote working are numerous for employees seeking an alternative way of working. A significant remote work advantage is the sense of greater autonomy over where and how you work, plus the flexibility to work within your own home, potentially providing a better work-life balance and little or no commute. While the number of full-time remote workers is still relatively low (16% of working adults stated to be working from home only in 2023), it’s on the steady increase.
What Are the Disadvantages of Remote Working?
Remote working presents many of the same challenges and disadvantages of hybrid working, including difficulty in maintaining communication with colleagues, feelings of isolation and lack of psychological investment in the company remote workers are employed by.
Many of these remote work disadvantages can be offset with proactive strategy from the employer, who should prioritise investment in remote working technology or collaborative software tools, as well as offering ‘touch base’ opportunities for remote workers to meet other employees in person, for both work collaboration and social bonding.
04 - The 4-Day Week and Compressed Hours
A 4-day working week compresses the standard number of hours in a full, 5-day week into 4 longer working days, with workers choosing to have longer working days in exchange for a free day.
There has been a huge amount of discussion, debate and speculation about the possible introduction of a 4-day working week in the UK. While this is still unlikely to be legislated as a countrywide standard, experiments with a shorter work week elsewhere in the world are providing interesting data on the subject and food for thought for government policy. The majority of 4-day work week trials have produced positive results, for both employed and employer, with many reporting both better work-life balance and an increase in company revenue.
So far, so promising? It’s likely too early to tell what the economic and social outcomes of a 4-day working week would truly look like in the UK, but more businesses are likely to experiment with the model in the near future.
For even more insights into the pros and cons of the 4-day week, plus commonly asked questions about the possible introduction of a shorter week in the UK, read this deep dive article on our blog.
05 - What are Employee Rights Regarding Flexible Working?
The UK’s Labour government have introduced new legislation in 2024 that allows workers to request flexible working from the first day of their employment, through a process known as ‘making a statutory application’.
The employer doesn’t have to grant the employee’s request but they must consider it, and if refused without good reason the employee may be able to complain to an employment tribunal.
It’s good practice for all employers to set out a clear policy on flexible working, and revise this periodically to reflect current legislation and to adapt to the evolving nature of modern work. Businesses who neglect flexible working may find that employees are likely to go elsewhere, as an ever-increasing number of organisations adopt flexible working models to some degree.
Adapt Your Hires to Your Work Style
As an employer, perhaps you’re experimenting with introducing hybrid working in your business, and want people YOONO will work just as productively at home as in the office.
Or maybe as a recruiter you’re looking for candidates who’ll fit in with flexible work styles (or traditional ones).
Everyone’s looking for different things at work, but it’s important to know if your things and their things line up. Make the perfect match with YOONO. Search for a candidate, and you’ll see everything you need to know about what makes them tick, and how they like to work.
So whether you’re looking for a remote keyboard warrior or the life-and-soul of the office, you’ll find them using YOONO. Go try it, and find the people who’ll be a natural fit for your business.
