It is difficult to overstate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on most aspects of running a business today. And one of the biggest impacts to the service and support organization has been the shift to work-from-home (WFH) operations. Service and support has tended to lag behind many other functions in terms of WFH. In a survey of 115 leaders, we saw that prior to the pandemic, 72 percent reported 10 percent or less of their workforce was working from home. But as of October, 76 percent of leaders reported 80 percent or more of their workforce is working from home. Leaders are not planning to continue offering work from home to the same extent as they have during pandemic, but they are also not planning to go back to the way things were before.
As customer service and support leaders consider their long-term post-pandemic WFH strategy, they must strive to understand the employee perspective on their WFH experience so far. Employee preferences for their future working environment, their perspective on concerns service and support leaders have flagged, and potential managerial blind spots or biases are all important factors leaders should weigh as they determine the initiatives in which to invest to optimize WFH for the future.
Most Employees Want to Continue Working from Home in Some Capacity Post-COVID-19
It is still uncertain when on-site operations will reopen on a large scale for many organizations, as 63 percent of service leaders say they still don't know when their employees will return to the office. However, it is likely that by that point, many employees will have been working from home full time for at least a year.
To understand the impact of the pandemic on employee engagement and employee desires for post-pandemic work arrangements, we conducted a survey of 5,000 employees, including 550 customer service professionals. Service employees, who traditionally did not have many opportunities to WFH, have found they enjoy it, and the majority (almost 70 percent) wish to continue working from home in some regular capacity once the pandemic is over. It is notable, however, that about a fifth of service employees have no desire to WFH after the pandemic, so the desire to WFH is by no means universal.
As service leaders weigh the future of their WFH programs, they'll have to balance their own visions for the future with employee preferences. It is not difficult to envision a scenario in which employees, content with their current WFH arrangements, start looking for new jobs if their current organization is unable to offer that arrangement in the future.
WFH Is a Potential Win for Culture but Could Hurt Collaboration
Conversations with leaders since the sudden, mass shift to WFH show major concerns for the future of culture without in-person collaboration (such as informal water cooler conversations, over-the-desk questions, and shared lunch breaks). However, the data we gathered from employees indicates WFH has posed less of a challenge to organizational culture than anticipated. In fact, most customer service employees who work remotely say organizational culture has remained the same since the shift to WFH. And most of those who think it's changed actually believe it has improved.
While employees affirm WFH hasn't negatively impacted culture, our data shows it has impacted collaboration, with 54 percent of service employees saying they interact with co-workers less often.
Managers Signal Biases Against WFH Employees
One area leaders generally haven't flagged as cause for concern in WFH is their managers. Perhaps it is because performance has largely remained consistent, with some minor hiccups, throughout the pandemic, so concern seemed unwarranted. But leaders should not take for granted that employees' consistent performance means all is well. The data collected from service managers should be concerning for leaders, particularly as organizations weigh permanently shifting to WFH or adopting some sort of hybrid workforce. Sixty-seven percent of managers believe employees in the office are higher performers, and 82 percent believe employees in theoffice are more likely to get promoted.
Managers appear to have some strong biases against remote employees, which seem particularly unfounded given the steady performance mentioned above. While the vast majority of employees continue to WFH, this presents less of an issue. But if managers hold these beliefs once some employees return to the office, they could create a barrier to career progression for employees who choose to continue working from home.
Leaders will need to weigh many factors as they make the decision about the future of WFH at their organizations. A key factor should be the impact WFH has had and will continue to have on the employee experience. Leaders will need to reconcile individual employee preferences for their work arrangements with what's best for the business.
Lauren Villeneuve is an advisory director at Gartner, and Sarah Dibble is a research senior principal at Gartner.