For one reason or another, Western markets, especially the US, dominate headlines about hybrid and remote work. But two recent articles reporting on a Brookings study took another look at the topic, spotlighting the rest of the world, including Asia.
In a The New York Times story essay called “Where in the World Are People Back in the Office?“ a global team of reporters share how Asia is officially behind on global markets regarding workplace flexibility.
“Many Asian countries have lower levels of remote work than countries in Europe and North America. Asia’s work-from-home levels were the lowest, with South Koreans working less than two days per month remotely, Japan two and Taiwan under three,” the article recaps the findings of a global study on work-from-home.
I was honoured to provide some context for the article, sharing with reporter Emma Goldberg that virtually all companies are back in the office in Vietnam and providing one of the reasons why: “A lot of people here don’t have their own places. Working from home at the kitchen table with three generations running around is not the best environment to be productive.”
Apartments, offices, and lockdowns
Matthew Boyle’s article in Bloomberg, “Return-to-Office Is a US$1.3 Trillion Problem Few Have Figured Out,” echoes this: “In Hong Kong, tiny apartments and an efficient public transport system have given residents fewer reasons to work from home. There, subway ridership surpassed 2019 levels in March, and empty office space is more tied to decreased Chinese investment than remote work.”
How long and intense COVID-19 hit each country played a massive role, too.
The NYT article quotes ITAM economist Jose Maria Barrero, who helped lead the Brookings study: “There were many countries in Asia that controlled early waves of COVID-19 pretty well without extended lockdowns. They didn’t have this experience where they had to hunker down for months on end working from home and get adapted to it.”
This lack of extended lockdowns explains why many workers never left their offices in countries like South Korea and my “home” of Vietnam.
In Singapore, with its extensive circuit-breakers, it was a very different situation. But it’s not only because Singaporeans worked from home longer than others in Asia during COVID-19 that explains the widespread adoption of hybrid work in the red dot.
Also Read: Is hybrid work arrangement the future of work?
The active promotion of the hybrid work model by the Singaporean government, the professional work culture, and the high level of digitisation all contributed to the uptake of flexible working models.
As a result, when surveyed towards the end of 2022, one in two Singaporean hybrid workers said they would consider quitting their job if they could no longer work hybrid.
This attitude starkly contrasts with Vietnam and other more developing markets in the region. Strong micromanagement and a lack of trust in employees, limited digitisation, and –as mentioned above– impractical work-from-home setups make widespread hybrid work adoption impossible.
According to Glints and MHV data, even early-stage startups, usually the first to adopt workplace flexibility, are back in the office full-time in markets like Vietnam (83 per cent) and Indonesia (33 per cent).
That’s not to say hybrid won’t happen here; the countries just have to mature, as I discussed with Home Credit Chief People Officer Alexis Pham in a recent CEEC Event. Alexis made excellent points about how we’re so early in Vietnam’s development that we must train companies’ readiness to go hybrid in the following years.
A highly diverse region
As I recently shared with Jeremy Au on the BRAVE podcast, when I first moved from Chicago to Singapore in 2014 in a regional role for the advertising agency Ogilvy, I learned quickly that Asia is much more diverse than I could have imagined.
Yes, this is a cluster of geographically close countries, but the cultures and levels of development are vastly different. That’s why you see such extreme differences between countries in South-East Asia.
A recent Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) highlighted eight key elements that shape the way Southeast Asian countries adopt hybrid – or not:
- National culture: “Indonesian people may need more control, so we can’t let them work independently.”
- Organisational culture: “Implementing hybrid was not too hard in our organisation since the culture mainly centres on trust and empowerment.”
- Industry: “Our line of business is banking, which is closely related to operations and service; therefore, some units are unable to do hybrid work.”
- Function: “While we have transitioned our customer service teams to hybrid, other functions are expected to come into work.”
- Role/nature of work: “For gaining knowledge/information, we can do a hybrid work style; however, for harnessing wisdom, a face-to-face mode is still more effective.”
- Leader level: “For negotiations at a top-management level that require not only logical communication but also emotional communication, face-to-face is essential.”
- Generation: “The seniors needed more time to adapt to the new situation since they were used to doing everything face-to-face. Meanwhile, the Millennials didn’t have much problem embracing the hybrid policy.”
- Leader personality: “As we left the hybrid discretion to our managers, we realised that some leaders transitioned quite easily while others struggled.”
These reasons, combined with some structural challenges highlighted by the New York Times and Bloomberg articles, explain how the (non) adoption of hybrid and remote work varies so wildly by market.
What hybrid and remote employees want
For companies that did embrace hybrid and remote work, it remains a puzzle to make the flexible models work. We recently surveyed hybrid and remote employees in the US and noted that less than half of them are satisfied with their current schedules, managers, and support.
Also Read: Myths vs reality: Remote and hybrid managers report high productivity and trust
Common best practices, as introduced by ‘remote pros’ like Gitlab and Buffer, such as clear communication, documentation by default, and attention to diversity and inclusion, are not widely practised yet by managers.
This lack of strong hybrid management muscles echoes the manager research I shared here on e27 earlier this year, in which one in two managers said they wanted more training in communicating and collaborating with their hybrid teams.
It also shows that beyond Asian markets lagging, even countries and companies that have embraced hybrid still have a lot to figure out. And that’s fine – things have changed so significantly in the past three years.
To make it work, leaders should continue to listen to their teams, understand what works and what doesn’t, implement new efforts, listen, and improve further.
We’re all on this journey together.
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This article was first published on September 26, 2023
The post Examining global hybrid and remote work trends beyond the West appeared first on e27.