The hybrid work model

Author: Julio Benavides

Why the hybrid work model is liked by our employees? Julio Benavides, a Senior Software Engineer at Wiccon, has shared from his experience below.

"I was scrolling through the news the other day, and I read Sundar Pichai’s, the Google CEO’s, opinion on working 3 days in the office and 2 at home. Sundar explained it as a “good balance” for employees, and I realized that this is exactly what I’ve been doing for a while now, and it’s perfect! 

Many would say that working remotely should be the way now, and talents may even reject a job offer if this wouldn’t be a choice. Thanks to today’s technology, it has become manageable and convenient, but there are negative effects to it too. For example, according to a French poll from 2021, 26% of remote French workers reported anxiety and depression, 46% said the workload has increased, and 10% reported they had a burn-out. Besides emotional factors, the electricity consumption has increased at employees’ homes.

But for what advantage? According to an experiment made in China by Stanford University, in 2011, working remotely leads to numerous performance advantages. The experiment has shown:

Employees’ productivity increased by 13% - because employees save one hour on commuting, make less pauses at home, and have a calmer work environment. 

Enterprises’ productivity increased by 20% to 30%, and saved around 2000 dollars per year per each remotely working employee. 

From an environmental perspective, working from home reduces pollution and CO2 emissions due to the less traffic.  

Pondering both the disadvantages and the advantages, personally I think that a good balance is to work in a hybrid way, by a “hybrid model” to say so - with some days at home and some at the office. 

As a software engineer myself, there are times when developers need full focus to be able to carry out solutions. It is in those moments when I prefer to be at home completely focused on programming. But there are other times when it is necessary to coordinate, to execute code reviews or to attend work meetings. I prefer face-to-face code reviews with my colleagues, even though I know it’s hard sometimes to have them all together during the pandemic. 

More than that, I think it is not psychologically healthy to stay at home all the time. Home can start to feel like “a prison”, and sometimes it is even difficult to stop working when I am at home though I know it can affect my personal life with my relatives. 

All in all, I believe that we, humans, are social human-beings and we need to see each other, to share ideas and experiences."