By Chloe Mari A. Hufana, Reporter
LOCKDOWNS spawned by the coronavirus pandemic forced people to adopt a flexible working life. They also showed that a considerable amount of work that took place in the office can continue when it’s closed.
Work life and home life melded together under the work-from-home setup, and now that the pandemic is gone, the hybrid setup appears to be the way forward, with many employers and employees agreeing to maintain this flexibility.
“This system enables employees to have the best of both worlds,” according to Jobstreet Singapore. “When they need a break from the office and the commute, they can work from home.”
“Hybrid work arrangements open up job generation opportunities for people who need the flexibility in their work setup for better work-life balance,” Jack Madrid, president and chief executive officer of the IT & Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), told BusinessWorld in a Viber message.
He noted how the hybrid setup had helped decongest Metro Manila traffic, known globally for being one of the worst.
Being able to work from home on some days means doing away with daily commute times, increasing worker productivity and benefiting their health and well-being, he said. “It provides better talent retention and by expanding talent pools, it results in stronger diversity and inclusion.”
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, about 2.9 million cars passed through major Philippine highways in the capital region, according to the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
In 2021 and 2022, when lockdown restrictions were slowly being lifted, MMDA recorded 3.19 million and 3.53 million. Last year, it recorded the highest annual average daily traffic at 3.6 million, beating pre-pandemic levels.
“The future of work is about flexibility,” Mr. Madrid separately said by telephone. “You listen to what your customer needs. You listen to what your employer needs, and you listen to the voice of the employee.”
“You have to balance the interests and objectives of the customer, the employer — in this case, it’s IBPAP — and the employee,” he added.
IBPAP doesn’t necessarily cut costs by allowing hybrid work because its more than 400 members still have to pay office rent.
“The location of where the work gets done is not important,” Mr. Madrid said. “What’s more important for me are the results. If you can do it outside the office, good. If you can only do it in the office, then you have to go to the office. Everyone has a different job. So, the future is about flexibility.”
Mikaela Katrina D. Coco, a 24-year-old multimedia producer for Chapters PH, creative content creator, said a hybrid setup is best for balancing work and life.
“It provides more opportunities for work-life balance and saves time and resources compared with reporting to work every day,” she said in a Facebook Messenger chat. “Since I work in media production, I don’t have fixed work hours.
Hybrid work, however, might not be for everyone.
Quintin V. Pastrana, president and head of Business Development at WEnergy Power Pilipinas, Inc., said his company has a traditional, in-office setup, but incorporates different activities in between office hours to help employees.
While WEnergy allowed employees to work from home thrice a week during the pandemic, the traditional face-to-face setup works best for his lean team, he said by telephone. They went back to a full office setup in mid-2022.
“It’s difficult [to have a remote setup] because we’re a very flat organization,” he said. “So, a lot of it is multitasking. And you cannot multitask in front of a desktop or laptop at home.”
Mr. Pastrana said the company requires a lot of collaboration among employees that is better done face to face. “That collaboration is in our DNA as a company… [It can get] stifled with a work-from-home setup, [where] there’s not a lot of interaction.”
Despite a full office setup, WEnergy employees still enjoy flexible hours, he said. “If somebody has a traffic issue, we can start at 10 a.m. So, those things will make a difference in terms of micro-flexibility. I think that is also a function of what we’ve learned from the pandemic.”
Mr. Pastrana said the company closed more deals when people were working in the office. “Those things make a difference.”
“A more nuanced approach to a hybrid setup doesn’t necessarily mean work from home. It just means building in a lot more balanced activity within the workday. And in our case, we have a very set schedule in terms of when the activity day is, which is Friday,” he said.
“Team lunch is on Tuesday.”
STATE OF REAL ESTATE
Hybrid work did affect the demand for office real estate, Joey Roi H. Bondoc, research director at Colliers Philippines, told BusinessWorld by telephone.
“At the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, at some point during that period, vacancies in the flexi-space market peaked at about 40%, mainly because people were not allowed to go out,” he said. “As a result of flexi workspace vacancies during that period, I think the work-from-anywhere setup resulted in an increase in demand for these co-working facilities,” he added.
Mr. Bondoc noted that before the pandemic, companies used to rent three floors of office space, but under the so-called new normal, they are down to just one floor. Colliers expects Metro Manila’s office vacancy rate to widen to 19.6% by yearend from 19.3% in 2023.
The rise of hybrid and remote work setups also gave way to the rise of co-working spaces. Colliers found that people prefer co-working spaces inside malls for convenience.
Mr. Bondoc said Colliers is seeing a rising trend of state agencies occupying more properties in the metro. For instance, the National Bureau of Investigation is occupying an entire building in the Bay Area in Pasay City.
“They are transferring to newer office spaces but at lower lease rates,” he said. “They are taking advantage of the vacancies in the market.”
Mr. Bondoc said Colliers continues to advise clients about where they should invest amid headwinds in the local property market.
“If you’re a mall, a residential developer or an office building developer, you need to innovate and renovate, otherwise you will evaporate,” he said. For developers and property firms, we believe that recalibration is important to quell extinction.”
Companies should also learn to adapt.
“If you’ve decided to be a hybrid organization, activating the office component isn’t simply a matter of unlocking the doors and dusting away the cobwebs,” according to a blog post from peoplemanagingpeople.com. “You’ve got to manage your office in a different way. It’s not the place where people come to do work anymore.”
