For many of us, it will be hard to believe that it is five years since the first Covid-19 lockdown and the beginning of a nightmare that some of us have never woken up from.
Jobs that seemed impossible to be done from home suddenly became remote overnight with IT teams were at the heart of things, cobbling together systems to allow for immediate remote working.
These days, many of those jobs are still at least partially remote and research from IT firm Datapac shows businesses are now trying to put in place permanent solutions for hybrid working. They are dealing with all the issues that have become familiar in the interim.
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The survey emphasises the importance of having the right digital tools and technologies in place to ensure success in the modern workplace. Close to half of IT decision makers, as Datapac calls them, would rate their infrastructure’s ability to support hybrid work as only “somewhat” or “not too” capable.
That’s a description many workers will recognise as they complain to colleagues about their set-up.
Work-life balance continues to be a problem for close to 40 per cent of those who took part in the study, while training as well as cybersecurity continues to be a challenge – perhaps unsurprising given the prevalence of “bring your own device” in the workplace these days.
Issues around communication and collaboration were also identified. The lack of such communication has been a recurring theme for companies pushing to get their employees back into the office full-time.
Still, it’s not all bad news.
Hybrid working appears to have endured, regardless of some high-profile employers, such as Amazon, demanding their people get back to their desks five days a week. Some 96 per cent of firms surveyed now run a model that doesn’t require staff to be in the office full time.
Five years after so many of us were sent home, it seems that, regardless of what bosses might want, it will be a long slog to get staff back into the office every working day of the week.
