COVID-19 has resulted in a sea-change in thinking regarding the workplace. WFH has become pervasive for most workers - save for some sectors, including the manufacturing and hospitality, and certain front-line workers. And it looks to stay, be it in hybrid or full-form, post-pandemic. 

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) - the professional body for HR and people development - reports that, compared to 18% pre-COVID, 37% of employers expect their employees to regularly WFH post-pandemic. In terms of full- time working, the figure is 22%, rising from 9% before the first lockdown.

WFH – the challenges ahead

Undoubtedly, the greatest business challenge of 2020 was adjusting to the new and unknown remote work reality. People leaders took decisive action to keep their businesses afloat.

With remote work adoption on the rise, the challenge for businesses that want to stay ahead in 2021 and beyond will be offering a competitive remote work programme that enables both the business and its employees to capitalise on the benefits of working from home.

The greatest hurdle for most organisations will be overcoming inefficiency. Remote work management is a cross-team effort, incorporating skills and knowledge across HR ops, facilities, IT, legal and finance. It can be an expensive and time-consuming operation, especially for larger organisations.

In order to sustain and scale remote working, businesses therefore need to identify a pragmatic management solution.

Hofy - the remote work startup helping businesses to combat this challenge. 

The WFH management solution - Hofy

Hofy launched in early 2020 just before the pandemic hit. Hofy’s platform is the tech-enabled alternative to managing a remote work programme in-house.

“Standing-up an in-house team is not an efficient way of doing things - especially at scale,” says Sami Bouremoum, Hofy co-founder and CEO.  

“This inefficiency was one of the main driving forces behind the Hofy platform. We saw that many of the processes involved in remote working management could be centralised and automated with the right software. So we set out to build a platform that one administrator, rather than a whole team, could use to provision and maintain home office equipment, on- and off-board employees, store all the information relating to their legal requirements and keep track of the financials involved, among other things.”

Home office provisioning is essentially admin-free through Hofy. Managers create teams, pre-approve products and budgets for individual teams, invite all their employees to the Hofy platform, and then create orders or await order requests to approve in a click.

Their employees access an Amazon-style webstore where they can choose products in the styles and colours they like - either from those their manager has pre-selected or, for a nice bonus touch, employees can top up the company budget themselves in order to upgrade to a piece of equipment they love.

Hofy will then pre-assemble, deliver and install the furniture and equipment within a four-hour slot, chosen by the employee.

Scalability is key to the Hofy model. Due to Hofy’s extensive logistics and supplier network, they can deliver over 500 home offices per day.

WFH - the benefits

The business benefits of remote working span reduced absenteeism and turnover to increased productivity and morale. And with Hofy, the gains are amplified.

“We’ve done some analysis and by our math, businesses can save over £8M a year per 1,000 staff in operating expenses by mandating a 2-3 day a week WFH policy. This is after accounting for the costs related to equipping people for remote working at home,” says Bouremoum. 

“With a platform like Hofy, the cost of equipping an employee is 10-20 times cheaper than the cost of office space in major European cities, and the gain in productivity and reduction of absenteeism more than offsets any investment in equipment - so it’s a no brainer for most rational leaders,” adds his co-founder and COO, Michael Ginzo.

The future of remote work looks bright with organisations like Hofy at the helm.