Mind the employee engagement gap in hybrid work

WITH the recent relaxation of safe-management rules and a higher threshold for employees to work in the office, organisations continue to adapt to the new reality of hybrid and flexible ways of working. This trend is likely to stay for the long term, given how the pandemic has normalised remote working from a "need" to a "want".

According to the EY 2021 Work Reimagined Employee Survey, employee expectations have shifted. Only 15 per cent of employees surveyed in South-east Asia, including Singapore, would prefer to work from office full-time when pandemic restrictions ease locally. The majority prefer to work anywhere, or remotely full-time, or in a hybrid work arrangement.

Government impetus to drive workplace flexibility is also growing - and a key component of flexibility is the ability to work anywhere. A White Paper tabled in March in Singapore outlined that a set of tripartite guidelines on flexible work arrangements (FWAs) will be ready by 2024, and employers will then have to consider such requests from employees fairly and properly. For now, the government aims to increase the adoption of a voluntary tripartite standard on FWAs to reach 40 per cent of all employees by end-2022.