Over two-thirds of employees in organizations have the opportunity to continue working from home between 2 and 4 days a week, and 79% of companies believe that the future way of business management will be hybrid – a combination of live-work (face to face) and from a distance (digital).
This is shown by the results of the second study of Leadership Support on the topic: “How is your organization coping with the challenges of the Crown Pandemic?”. The survey was conducted in November and December 2020 and included 250 companies from 13 sectors.
The results confirm the trend of accelerating digitalization in many business sectors. Over 88% of companies say that a great transformation has occurred as a result of the use of new digital tools for collaboration and communication with an emphasis on the continuous exchange of experience and feedback in the digital workspace.
Despite the challenges they face in working remotely, more than half of the companies are coping with the emergency better than originally expected. In 62% of companies, employees have achieved a better work-life balance. Nearly 80% of organizations report that their productivity has increased, and 46% report an improvement in their IT skills. Operating in this dynamic environment, almost 70% of companies rely on a highly flexible organizational structure in future management.
Remote work definitely creates a number of challenges for leaders to manage the teams they lead, the study said. However, the majority of managers have expert skills in managing their teams remotely and only a third of them have basic skills in managing a virtual environment.
Managers and HR experts need to focus on the commitment, experience, training, and development of their employees. Leaders are required to acquire new competencies that are key in the context of the “new normal”, and the most common answers in this regard are:
- Flexibility. Adaptability. Online communication.
- Process management; delegation skills; skills for giving positive feedback.
- Time management, virtual communication, and management,
- Skills for managing virtual teams, developing skills for a hybrid form of management.
Leadership Support conducted the same study in parallel in Germany with its partners from Kommunikationskolleg AG Consulting & Training and made a comparative analysis between the companies in the two countries in terms of their adaptation to the “new normal”.
According to the survey, 15% more business organizations believe that their employees have improved their IT skills thanks to telecommuting. 30% more respondents said that their people were tired of the restrictions and longed to return to the “good old normality”. There is a unanimous opinion of both Bulgarian and German companies that hybrid work and mixed management (live and digital) is the future way of management.
