17th July 2020: A Telecommunications firm Telenor in Norway saw a productivity spike during the switch to online working during coronavirus lockdown. Now it has planned a flexible future for its staff.
According to reports from the World Economic Forum, the message received from the CEO of Norwegian telecom giant Telenor’s to its 19,000 employees, was, “It’s up to you”. CEO, Sigve Brekke, is a self-confessed pioneer of a “flexible future”.
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The staff is now free to decide between office-based work and remote working. The choice depends on how each employee wishes to spend time working remotely or in the office.
Amid the wake of the pandemic, Brekke observed a huge spike in productivity linked to staff having the freedom to choose how they worked.
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“It all comes down to flexibility, trust, and freedom,” Brekke explains during a Zoom interview on remote working with the World Economic Forum. “Our daughter company in Finland has had this flexibility for many years. And we can see from their experiences that, on average, their employees are working outside the office around two days a week. And three days a week in the office.”
For Brekke, the key to success is to give staff members the freedom to choose the right balance. However, it is also essential to build an in-office culture in order for socializing and brainstorming. Outside of office hours, social gatherings and team-building events are also a priority.
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Flexible working can help eradicate traditional silos and hierarchical ways of working, streamlining working practices along the way.
Telenor is not the only tech company that has come up with a more flexible approach to working. Tech giants like Twitter and Square recently announced that their employees will have the option to work from home forever, while staff at Google and Facebook will be able to work remotely until the end of 2020.
Where on one side, the pandemic has brought disruption, while on the other hand, it has taught us many lessons too.
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