Remote Work Revolution and Ways to Address Its Challenges

Remote work isn’t anything new. In fact, it became a thing in 1973, when Jack Nilles, a NASA engineer, called remote work “telecommuting.” Long before modern computers became a thing, a team of five workers at IBM started working from home to test the effectiveness of remote work.

This number rose to 2,000 in just a decade.

While the progress towards remote work became slow after that, COVID-19 accelerated it to unprecedented levels. Remote work offers many benefits, but it also has a few key challenges that need to be addressed.

Let’s take a look at how to address these challenges to reap the full benefits that remote work offers.

Benefits of Remote Work

Challenges of Remote Work

Ways Businesses Can Adapt to Remote Work

Best Practices for Employees Working Remotely

Benefits of Remote Work

There are a lot of benefits of remote work, both for employees and businesses. Let’s take a look at some of its advantages.

  • Better Work-Life Balance: Working remotely helps people manage their professional and personal lives since it provides them with better control of their schedules. This allows them to reduce the time they spend commuting from work, which gives them additional time to do other activities. This can lead to better mental health and job satisfaction.
  • Environmental Benefits: An average American produces around 3.2 tons of CO2 just because of everyday commute. Now, imagine how much CO2 is produced by the 115 million cars every day. Eliminating the back-and-forth commute not only saves the employees’ time but also lowers carbon emissions, which can help create a sustainable environment.
  • Access to Global Talent: Through remote work opportunities, companies can look for talent all across the globe without having to worry about their location. Similarly, workers can find new opportunities without the need to travel or relocate. This can help workers and businesses look for the perfect opportunities and candidates regardless of their location.
  • Cost Saving: Through remote work, both employers and employees can save costs. For example, employers can save a lot of money on utilities, office space, and other overhead costs. Similarly, employees can save money on clothing, gas, and meals.
  • Improved Productivity: Workers who do remote work claim that they are more productive since they work in calm and more private environments that are free from interruptions in regular workplaces. This was backed up by a study by Upwork, where hiring managers said that productivity has increased because of remote work settings.

Challenges of Remote Work

While remote work has a lot of benefits, it also has a lot of challenges that need to be tackled to ensure a smoother way of working for both employees and employers. Here are some of them:

  • Communication Issues: One of the biggest problems with remote work is communicating effectively. While you can call using video conferencing services like Skype and Zoom, the lack of physical presence makes it difficult to build relationships and establish trust. Additionally, a lot of people work across different time zones and schedules, which can make it difficult to collaborate on different projects.
  • Maintaining Culture: When working remotely, it can be difficult to maintain shared values and a sense of community. A well-cultured company can breathe new life into the workforce, which triggers a higher level of engagement, innovation, and productivity, which can improve employee retention. This is hard to do when every employee works remotely.
  • Blurred Work-Life Boundaries: For some employees, remote work can blur the line between their work and personal life. Without this clear line, employees may struggle to disconnect from their work responsibilities, which can quickly lead to burnout.
  • Security Risks: Remote work presents some security risks, including cyber-attacks and data breaches. Employees working from home might also use their devices to access company networks, which may lack adequate security. Integrating identity management tools like Microsoft Entra ID can help mitigate these risks by ensuring secure authentication and access controls, reducing the chances of unauthorized access and data breaches.

Ways Businesses Can Adapt to Remote Work

Remote work has started to become popular because of COVID-19. Because of how popular it was, many businesses embraced the remote work revolution. While a lot of businesses have some concerns, there is always a way to deal with any potential concerns.

Utilize Good Security Practices

To make sure that your employees and the company’s data are safe, it’s important to enforce policies for data security. Companies can create a policy document for remote employees that lays out different security protocols that a company expects its employees to follow.

Make sure all employees have the right tools for their work. This includes VPNs, password managers, and antivirus software. To ensure security, you can also implement a two-factor authentication system for employees.

You can monitor the practices of remote work employees from time to time to make sure they comply with the rules and regulations. Let your employees know in advance that you intend to track them so there are no issues about trust.

There are bound to be a few things where the employees aren’t up to mark when they switch to remote work. It’s important to train your employees about cybersecurity awareness and ensure that the IT team is always there to assist the remote workforce if there are any security concerns.

Establish an Effective Communication Channel

Remote work creates a lot of communication hurdles for a team. It’s important to implement robust communication tools for messaging, emails, and video conferencing. This can help bridge the gap between the in-house teams and remote workers.

Making sure that everyone in your team is on the same page and can access the same information helps your team stay cohesive and consistent.

Managing a remote team is a lot more difficult for managers than managing a team in your office.

Communication platforms like Slack and Microsoft Teams offer a lot of ways employees can communicate in real-time. Video conferencing applications like Zoom and Skype can make remote interactions better by offering face-to-face meetings.

Create a Remote-Friendly Office Culture

Creating a work culture that supports remote work is crucial to keep workers feeling supported and connected to their team. You can do this by organizing team activities, hosting virtual parties, as well as sharing resources for the employee’s well-being and mental health.

This can also promote open communication and create a supportive work environment. Managers can also encourage employees to take breaks to wind down.

Best Practices for Employees Working Remotely

When working remotely, here are some of the best practices employees should adopt. Here are some of them.

Creating a Designated Workspace

It’s important to have the proper mindset when working from home. That simply can’t happen if your entire house is your office.

What you can do is dedicate a room or a small portion of your room to be your dedicated workspace. If you have a separate computer or laptop for work, make sure to always keep it in your dedicated workspace.

Also, try keeping everything you need during work hours in that one dedicated workspace so you’re not distracted by other things in your house.

To keep yourself always connected, make sure you have a reliable internet connection so you can always stay connected. If you’re working from home, your internet usage is going to be higher since you’re going to be attending virtual meetings.

We recommend getting any of the Xfinity Internet plans since they are suitable for your work-from-home needs.

Establish a Routine for Work

Since the lines between your work and personal life tend to become blurred with remote work, you must create a routine. Start and end your work at the same time each day and take scheduled breaks in between to keep yourself fresh throughout the day.

To stay organized, you can use tools like to-do lists and calendars, so you always stay on track while managing your workload.

We’re all guilty of picking up our phones to check one text, only to find ourselves watching an endless stream of Instagram Shorts. To avoid this, try using a physical calendar or one on your work computer to avoid such distractions.

Maintain Regular Communication With Your Team

During work hours, it’s important to keep in touch with your manager and colleagues through chat, emails, or virtual meetings.

Regular check-ins and clear communication ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals. Keep the concerned people informed and raise any concerns if any. Communication is key to keeping remote teams productive since you can’t interact with your colleagues face-to-face.

This is what leads to a higher level of productivity during remote work.

While there are a lot of challenges with remote work, these aren’t major hurdles that companies can’t handle. All it needs is a little shift in the way companies handle things. As remote work starts to become a staple in the professional landscape, employers and employees need to embrace the opportunities it presents and adapt to the challenges it presents.

By doing this, we will be able to shape the future that offers the best of both worlds and empowers people and organizations to get ahead in this digital interconnected world.

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