Unlocking Staff Happiness & Productivity

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to design digital workplaces or “offices in the cloud.” These environments enable companies to allow flexible and remote working for their teams. I also teach the digital literacy, fluency, communication and collaboration skills needed to work in these modern technology-rich workplaces.

Prior to the forced “pandemic remote work” surveys of remote workers have consistently have them score higher on the happiness index than their in-office counterparts. For example see this from 2016.

The reason for this is primarily the freedom and flexibility that working from anywhere gives an individual. Very closely linked to the high happiness scores is higher productivity. Which of course makes complete sense. Happier people tend to be more productive!

Those companies who are going to use the pandemic experience to achieve physical office escape velocity are going to experience the same. This freedom allows people to optimise their lives better by moving out of cities for example, which people are now doing by the 1,000’s as per this data.

Will you be unlocking this freedom for your people in the coming year?