WITH the easing of lockdown, flexible workspace demand is beginning to return to 2019 levels and much of their growing market is amongst the many companies that are looking to find more mobile ways of working, offering employees the option to work from home, at the office, or from satellite co-working hubs that bridge the two.
That’s according to Joanne Bushell, Managing Director of IWG Plc South Africa, the largest flexible workspace provider globally, who said the pandemic was driving irreversible changes to the definitions of entrenched concepts like “a job” and “a workplace”.
“For many people, having a job will no longer mean being paid to spend a certain number of hours each month at a place of work… and their workplace will no longer be a single building with an allocated desk space.”
Bushell said it is not just technology that is facilitating this metamorphosis, but people’s attitudes and mind-sets have created the demand to work flexibly and promote agility. More businesses are becoming open to valuing employees on performance and productivity rather than actual in-office facetime, meaning a mobile workforce is evolving quicker than ever.
“Indeed, flexibility is one of the single biggest requirements of the modern workforce. Remote working has many advantages… from achieving a better work-life balance to less commute stress.
“Of particular relevance in the South African context, it also gives companies the opportunity to embrace diversity and inclusion by hiring people from different socioeconomic, geographic, and cultural backgrounds and with different perspectives. Equally, it broadens job opportunities for people in rural communities, or small towns, since they need not be limited by geographic location.”
