Accountability in the white collar workforce
The Covid-19 pandemic has empowered employees with the flexibility of working from home or hybrid work styles. However, even with the benefits, the given flexibility of work from home or hybrid work arrangements does present itself with a host of problems of accountability in the white collar industry. In this blog, we turn to Suvaneswary, Senior Recruitment Consultant of FirstWorks Group to explore the issues which employers are currently facing.
Working from home has presented itself with a whole host of benefits for the mental wellbeing of employers all around the globe. Even so, employers face problems of dipping productivity levels when their employers also have to manage their family while balancing their work at the same time. This may result in deadlines not being met and tasks not being completed on time, which contribute to an employee’s accountability. Not only that, work from home set-ups may not be ideal for comfort, where workers may see discomfort due to an ill-equipped home office. Working virtually has also created a trust-deficit, wherein office settings, managers and colleagues may be directly accountable to one another and may seek out each other when faced with a conundrum.
In order to create accountability, Suva explains, trust will be an important factor in the white collar workforce. For employees and employers alike, building trust begins with creating connections with each other. This may be through casual discourse exploring the interests of one another. Once this connection is established, employers will be able to encourage employees to be more engaged at work, and encourage a culture of collaboration within the workplace.
Not only that, employees must also be committed to the set work hours of an organisation – working from home or remotely should not be taken advantage of when employers put significant trust on the employees to ensure that work is completed in the allocated time. Furthermore, employees must strike a balance between work and personal life when given the flexibility to work from home. Employees must be honest with their work, and have honest communication with their superiors to ensure that the line of communication at work is clear.
From this, it is clear that accountability in the white collar workplace is highly reliant on a symbiotic relationship between the employers and their employees. Although technology has become a great solution to remote work, the human aspect of the workplace must be maintained. Organisations highly rely on its employees in order to ensure productivity and results, whilst employees will turn to their employers to navigate remote work arrangements. Therefore, this new sense of accountability must be seen as an opportunity for workplaces and employees to shift to a more transparent way of working in the long run.
