Before the pandemic, young professionals flocked to the cities that gave them the most career opportunities. Investment bankers eyed opportunities in New York City, while engineers looked west to Silicon Valley. For many professionals, being in a certain region was an explicit requirement for a successful career.

COVID-19 shattered that illusion when employees were sent home, tasked with working in shared spaces with spouses and pets. For parents, this also meant juggling work, childcare, and school. Suddenly, a world in which employees needed to commute to the office, clock in by 8 a.m., and work for eight or nine hours straight didn’t make much sense.

And maybe it never did.

Rather than just a second choice or backup plan, I see the virtual workforce as an opportunity to empower employees to pursue their passions, take advantage of professional opportunities, and spend more time with family. For companies, embracing the virtual workforce might be the best pathway to building and fostering a truly diverse team.

When I joined Quantum Metric as CMO in 2019, the company had already embraced a hybrid work policy. Working from home — and working from anywhere — was the default. We had satellite offices, but it was never a requirement to work in person. I’m able to lead my team from my home office in San Diego. This has completely changed my ability to balance who I am as an executive, as a mom, and as an individual who wants to pursue a life-work balance.

Offering Career Growth Opportunities

As more and more people become vaccinated, some companies feel pressured to return to “business as usual,” with the majority of employees coming into the office for a set amount of time each day. This is the wrong approach.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that major business decisions can be made over Zoom, from raising venture funds to going public. Even if companies want to retain part of the in-person experience at the office, they should only require one or two days in the office per week as an opportunity for teams to touch base.

Before the pandemic, some people, especially young parents, were hesitant to jump into roles that required significant amounts of travel. Others wouldn’t even consider positions that required long commutes of one to two hours. That has all changed. Now, we have the opportunity to seek out the job we want without sacrificing the life we’ve built at home.

Fostering Diversity

Embracing diversity doesn’t just mean creating more opportunities to hire people from different backgrounds. It also means understanding that employees think and work differently. Some employees are most productive when they wake up early. Others work better in the evening. My college-age son, for instance, does his best work in the evenings, while my daughter studies best at 5 a.m. These habits remain as people enter the workforce.

In today’s world, it might make sense to have a few hours in the middle of the day where all employees need to be logged on for meetings, to foster employee collaboration. Otherwise, companies should be empowering their team members to work at times that best suit their needs. Why was it ever decided that one person determines the hours where others will be most productive?

As leaders, it is our responsibility to think differently. The key here is to empower your employees to ask for the work environment they want (whether that is hybrid or fully virtual) and arm them with the tools to continue to succeed in the work environment they prefer. This includes hybrid work environments but also an understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all model for returning to the office.

Embracing A New Type Of Work-Life Balance

Don’t get me wrong: I love face-to-face meetings and getting to know people in real life. But, I actually feel much closer to my colleagues and customers than I did before. On video calls, I see colleagues’ kids, their houses, their dining rooms, their dogs and their backyards. It feels acceptable — even encouraged — to ask about family and life outside of work.

Some parents have even used remote work as an opportunity to get their children more involved in their work lives. In the early days of the pandemic, I was part of a roundtable with Rick Pitino, a retired college basketball coach, as a guest speaker. One of the executives asked if she could bring her 16-year-old son to the session since he played basketball competitively. In our debriefing session, her son offered his unique perspective, which gave more context to the earlier conversation.

This is how we evolve to the next stage of company culture, collaboration, and innovation. How we once again learn to connect and challenge ourselves to rethink the status quo. We’ve entered an era unofficially dubbed “the great recognition,” an opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been and how we can do better in the future. For leaders and employers, it's an opportunity to reexamine their company culture to attract top talent in 2022 and beyond.

To be a great employer requires fostering a supportive work environment that offers employees with flexible work schedules. This is how you build a team that is not just productive, but more motivated to accomplish their work and pursue their passions.

Efrat Ravid is the Chief Marketing Officer for Quantum Metric, which helps customers build better digital products faster with a platform for Continuous Product Design (CPD). Efrat is passionate about partnering directly with customers to improve not only the product but also the entire user journey.