At the onset of the pandemic, a significant portion of employees in Vietnam continued their regular office attendance without interruption. When it comes to the transition back to office work, Asia is currently leading the way, boasting an impressive office occupancy rate of nearly 80%.
Daan van Rossum’s venture stands apart from the typical business landscape in Vietnam; his company, FlexOS, provides hybrid work solutions.
In 2022, this Dutch entrepreneur relocated to Ho Chi Minh City, where he established FlexOS, specializing in developing digital tools for hybrid and remote management. Importantly, he permits his employees to embrace a hybrid work arrangement.
Van Rossum shared his perspective, “I cannot run this company and then tell them to come to the office five days a week. That would be cruel.” Nevertheless, he acknowledged that such a hybrid work approach remains exceedingly uncommon among Vietnamese companies.
Vietnam implemented a 15-day national lockdown at the pandemic’s outset, leading some companies to adopt remote work initially. However, many quickly returned to fully in-person office setups. In general, Asia has witnessed a higher rate of office reoccupancy compared to the United States.
According to data from Jones Lang LaSalle, office occupancy in the Asia-Pacific region stands at 79%, slightly surpassing Europe at 75%, while the Americas lag behind at 49%.
Daan van Rossum’s research suggests that the actual number of companies fully operating in-person may be even greater.
“If you’re trying to retain and engage and attract really good talent, then you’re obviously looking at what are other companies doing, and so when companies realized that remote work wasn’t really as mainstream as some people maybe have thought, very quickly they went back to the office,” van Rossum noted.
Numerous American companies have been making efforts to encourage employees to return to the office. In contrast, in many Asian countries, the majority of workers continued to report to the office consistently, even during the peak of the pandemic.
Van Rossum’s primarily Gen Z team values a work-life balance that includes freedom and flexibility. To achieve this, he established a two-day office schedule, with team members informally choosing coffee shops or coworking spaces on non-office days. This arrangement has bolstered their focus and enabled them to efficiently tackle time-sensitive projects, reducing office distractions. Additionally, employees have reported increased productivity as they no longer contend with lengthy commutes.
According to Van Rossum, a significant number of young individuals, including several of his team members, reside with both their parents and grandparents, which can occasionally lead to a less-than-ideal, tranquil home-based work environment.
Commencing monthly salaries in Vietnam typically hover around $434, a factor that contributes to the practice of many younger Vietnamese workers residing with their families for several years following college graduation. According to Van Rossum, the majority of his employees under the age of 27 still call their family homes their own.
“It’s pretty normal for people here to basically spend the first 30 to 60 minutes every day on their motorbike in 90- to 100-degree weather bumper to bumper on the way to the office. This doesn’t make any sense, like, why don’t we just let people work from home who have the capacity to do that?,” van Rossum said.
Nations such as Japan and South Korea have some of the lowest average remote work days among all countries. This is because neither Japan nor South Korea implemented a complete national lockdown, which meant that many workers never had to adapt to remote work arrangements.
American workers, on average, spend about 1.4 days per week working from home, whereas South Korean and Japanese workers work remotely for 0.4 and 0.5 days, respectively. In Vietnam and some other Asian countries, certain tasks necessitate in-person presence, such as affixing a physical company seal to documents. Additionally, a report from February reveals that a significant proportion of leaders in India, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka expect their employees to work in the office daily. Singapore is similar to the US in offering remote work options, thanks to its advanced digitization, with substantial investments in telecommunications and government efforts to digitize files in large companies.
(Source: Noah Sheidlower | Business Insider)
