Goodbye to 2021 and hello to the year of hybrid work

2021 is over and 2022 is already underway, but before the first month of the year is ripped off the calendar, I want to take a minute to take stock of the past year. So, for my first blog entry of the year, I will look at how 2021 treated Sign In Workspace, how 2021 treated the world and take a short look at 2022.

What did we expect of 2021?

Going into 2021 we knew that corona was still going to be a challenge for the return to the office, but we also expected to see the hybrid work model become more common. And not only has vaccines made the return possible, but we have also seen many organizations begin transforming to a hybrid work model.

In September 2021 Gallup carried out a survey among US employees where 9 out of 10 respondents answered that they would prefer to maintain a degree of remote work after the pandemic, * which very much indicates that hybrid is the future.

This is in stark contrast to the predictions that have surfaced in the early weeks of the year, where business coaches and managers has taken to stating that 2022 is going to see the end of remote and hybrid work.

From my perspective, and from the Sign In Workspace perspective, the opposite to be true, not only in the US, but all over the world.

Since the summer of 2021, we have been working in a hybrid format where employees have been able to switch between working from home and the office to fit their needs, and it really has made a lot of things easier.

Looking beyond Sign In Workspace, there’s also a clear tendency in the market as we’ve seen an increased interest in solutions such as Workspace. This has of course benefitted us and has allowed us to increase our staff by a third.

So how did 2021 go?

For Sign In Workspace, 2021 was a great year. We have added 13 amazing new colleagues, we have onboarded some outstanding customers and we have improved on our entire product line. Being able to do this has shown me, and the rest of the team, that the hybrid work model is here to stay – but you don’t have to take my word for it.

By looking at the results of the many surveys carried out over the course of the year, there is a clear tendency when it comes to hybrid work.

63% of high-growth companies work according to a hybrid work model

While both remote and hybrid work presents a whole new set of challenges for team- and facility managers alike, has too many benefits to ignore. According to a survey carried out by Accenture 63% of high-growth companies surveyed had already adopted the hybrid work model. *

66% of company leaders are considering designing their offices for hybrid

And it’s not just growing companies that are seeing the benefits of the new format. Many companies are even looking at going so far as to redesign their office space to fit the new format. In a survey carried out by Microsoft among business leaders, 66% of the surveyed leaders said they were considering redesigning the office to fit their hybrid work strategy. *

61% expect to work according to the hybrid work model in 2022

We aren’t the only ones who’s expecting 2022 to be the year of hybrid work. In a survey carried out by Gallup among white-collar workers in September 2021, 61% answered that they expected to work according to a hybrid work model in 2022. *

2022 looks to be the year where hybrid work becomes the normal way of working. Of course, it’s great to see it becoming the norm because we supply the tools needed to make this transition possible, so it evolves the market we operate in. But on a more personal level, I can see how much the Sign In Workspace team gains from the hybrid format, and that is really what makes the whole transition worth it.

Working during covid

Like 2020, 2021 was a year very much influenced by covid, and it has affected most of us in a big way, but a mix of vaccines, luck, and clever workplace strategies has allowed many offices to reopen although with a reduced capacity, and we did too.

For us, the adoption of a hybrid work model has let us ride out a winter where employees were still able to come into the office even if it was in reduced numbers, and all we needed was common sense and a way for employees to schedule when they were planning to come to the office – so Workspace turned out to be exactly the product we needed.

If you're looking to find out more about how to keep your offices open during the pandemic, there's more information in this article about how to keep your employees safe while working from the office.

Are you going to convert to hybrid in 2022?

That was my goodbye to 2021 and, if the Accenture survey is to be believed, it’s going to be hello to a 2022 of hybrid work. I know our year, here at Sign In Workspace, is going to be all about the hybrid work model. If you are considering converting to a hybrid work model this year, I will leave you with a piece of advice that sounds awfully like a sneaker slogan; just do it.

References:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/355907/remote-work-persisting-trending-permanent.aspx

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work

https://www.apollotechnical.com/hybrid-working-statistics/