What does the workplace look like in 2022?

Two years into the pandemic, we’ve seen a lot of changes happen in the workplace—from Zoom conferences, to employers shifting their business to entirely online. In this week’s blog entry, we’ll see how businesses adapted to the changes by allowing more flexibility for their employees and workers.

Shift to a completely online or hybrid setup

In 2020, when the pandemic started, Google was one of the first global businesses to announce that they were allowing their employees to work from home until 2021. Fast-forward to 2022, when majority of the population already has vaccines or has contracted the virus, CEO Sundar Pichai announced that they are still extending the WFH status of Google way into the year. With leaders like Pichai accepting this transition of the workplace, it has become a common discussion among businesses if a work from home setup is indeed sustainable. A lot of employers have seen a drop in productivity when it comes to employees working from home, but on the flip side, there has been the problem of employers facing mass resignations if they made the announcement that they were now requiring employees to go back to the office. The reactions have been drastic, thus, a lot of employers have resorted to a hybrid model by downsizing their current work spaces by as much as 80%! I’ve spoken with a lot of former colleagues who have shared stories with me that their companies had a 300sqm office space pre-pandemic that they’ve downsized to just 20sqm with enough tables and seats for 4-5 employees. Instead of having one desk per employee, they shared one desk for 5 to 6 employees. Gone are the days that you can decorate your own desk with photos or personal memorabilia. Instead, you just use any desk that you want whenever you’re at the office. Companies use this approach to still have a physical office that their employees can go to when they need a quick change or a break in their work from home setup. This setup gives employees that flexibility to decide where they want to work and it allows them to have a change of scenery whenever they want to. It’s also good for their morale because they know that there is still somewhere they can go to if they want to spend time with their colleagues or they need to meet with someone for work.

Expanding their team globally

It’s not only in the workplace that companies were able to adapt changes brought about by the pandemic. When businesses started working from home and remotely, employers realized as well that they are able to now hire employees from anywhere in the world. Now, companies are not limited to hiring talent within the scope of their physical office—but anywhere in the world that the talent is available.

With companies realizing this, a lot of businesses turn to offshore staffing companies like 1625 Tech to hire remote talent for them. This is beneficial for companies because other countries like the Philippines have lower costs of living, thus companies are able to hire for the same roles offshore at just 30-50% the cost of hiring someone locally. For example, a digital marketing manager in Australia has an average salary of $20-30/ hour. A person with the same experience and qualifications in the Philippines will only cost about $11-14/hour to hire. More so, offshore staffing companies take care of all the other expenses associated to hiring an employee like healthcare, taxes, mandated benefits, equipment, etc. All the business needs to think about is the work that the offshore team is going to do for them.

Because of this realization, a lot of startups and SMEs turn to offshore staffing to expand their business quickly and cost-effectively.