Europe’s Workers Won’t Return To The Office As Quickly As In The US And Asia: Despite plans to inoculate at least 70% of European adults by summer 2021, employees will go back to the office later than their peers in the UK, US, and China.

2021 – A Year Of Hybrid Experiences
While 2021 will be a year of hybrid experiences and growing fragmentation, European businesses must get ready for a post-pandemic world. They must target new business opportunities, devise an “office + anywhere” work policy, and plan a way to return to business travel.

Gradual And Complex Return To Business Travel
It will take more than a vaccine to get employees back on the road. Employers — and employees at Europe’s border controls — face a wide range of new travel requirements around the globe, including new vaccine passports and registries.

The Building Blocks For Long-Term EX Initiatives
To balance the short-term need for speed and effectiveness with the long-term goal of building and continuously optimizing a world-class employee experience companies must prioritize employee listening, leverage privacy by design to stop data hoarding, and embrace trust as a building block of employee relationships.

Enza Iannopollo, Forrester senior analyst (and co-author of the report), commented: “While most of us are eager to resume “life-as-usual” after a year of health and financial concerns and isolation, this is not a good time for businesses to rush decisions.

“On the contrary, employers in the UK and across the EU must design empathy-rich and risk-aware strategies to bring back employees and customers to the shop floor, the office, or wherever it is they operate. Companies that operate at a pan-European level should never undermine the fact that across Europe regulations vary, culture varies, the progression of vaccination varies. Any EU future of work strategy that doesn’t account for this complexity is set for failure.”