In business, you might find that there’s a great deal of utility to be found in various structures. For example, some companies are going to favor a situation where all their employees meet face to face and spend time in an office-type environment, and others won’t have a choice if their work involves manual operations through something like a warehouse. Others still might prefer to lean toward a remote structure, being more decentralized and hiring from all over, allowing their staff to work from home. The flexibility in how you hire might be appealing to many people, but understanding how you can hire to support the structure you want for your business on a broader basis can also be valuable.
The Remote Model
Again, being able to hire from anywhere and allow your employees to work from home can be valuable for building a very flexible structure. If you do take this route, though, it’s worth knowing what you need to make the most out of it.If you’re expecting your employees to have access to specialist tools and software, for example, utilizing Kong to develop API gateways on your website or edit videos, you’ll need to provide them with the right tools to do so. While the nature of this might change depending on the manner of work, the idea that you might have to supply certain things for them to do their work remotely is worth keeping in mind for this approach.
Flexible/Hybrid
There is a middle ground that you could explore. The hybrid model can be appealing to both employers and employees due to it potentially representing the best of both worlds. With this, the ability to work from home is offered, meaning that the working week comes with some downtime. However, it also means that employees can get the benefits of seeing other people and mixing up the setting of their work. From your perspective, you might see this as a way of having people in the office regularly, giving you a chance to speak with them face to face in a way that you perhaps prefer, while also gaining the benefits that come with allowing a working-from-home lifestyle, and it’s also something that you can make use of yourself.
The Office and Incentives
However, if you’ve decided that the best path ahead is one that has you embracing a typical office structure and encouraging employees to work in that space, it might be that you need the right incentives. A miserable environment that doesn’t feel necessary to physically be in might be detrimental to morale and mental health in the workplace, and that’s something that could have a bigger impact on productivity than you might expect. If you want people to come in, then you need to give them some incentive to do so. Part of this might be making your office a pleasant space to be in through the decor and use of the space, but other parts of it might be the benefits that come with the positions you have available. Making use of the collaborative space in the style of work might also help to emphasize the social aspect here.
