Hybrid work: Productivity may be up, but engagement is down

About six in 10 firms are reporting a decline in employee engagement in using hybrid work models.

A survey by Zoom found that 84% of organizations in the Asia Pacific have either a hybrid or remote working model.

Encouragingly, 83% of employees said that they are most productive in hybrid settings. And 87% of leaders in APAC considered increasing productivity to be the biggest consideration when determining the best working style for their company.

However, six in 10 leaders report a decline in employee engagement due to this approach, found the survey of more than 600 IT and C-suite leaders and nearly 1,900 knowledge workers across the globe, including 604 in APAC.

“Workplace flexibility is not only becoming increasingly commonplace in the APAC region, but more diverse in itself — ranging from flextime to location, role, and even rotation-based models,” noted Ricky Kapur, head of Asia Pacific, Zoom.

“Leaders today are faced with a new challenge of finding the best-fit hybrid model while keeping up with the evolving expectations of a multi-generational workforce and the impact of rapidly advancing technologies like AI.”

Generative AI ‘makes it easier to do my job’

A majority of employees (81%) agree that the tools and technology their organisation currently uses for remote work needs improving, highest among the other regions surveyed, found Zoom.

And organisations are already seeing the benefits of incorporating AI: 85% of APAC leaders believe that generative AI has made their workforce more productive, while 69% of employees in the region strongly or slightly agree that “generative AI makes it easier to do my job.”

However, significant barriers to generative AI adoption for employees in APAC still remain:

• 70% believe that generative AI has a high learning curve.
• 63% are not yet comfortable with generative AI.
• 55% are concerned that generative AI will negatively impact their job/position.

“While our study shows that APAC leaders generally recognise the productivity benefits that adopting AI at work can bring to their teams, many are not utilising AI to their full potential. As organisations seek to reduce friction in the transition to hybrid ways of working, AI is a critical tool at their disposal to help employees collaborate better and feel more connected to each other,” said Kapur.

“Beyond direct productivity benefits, leaders should look toward exploring more AI use cases to engage, inform, and connect employees. This will be key to building and maintaining company culture amidst changing workplace dynamics,” he said further.