The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way people work and collaborate. In a stressful situation such as this, employees of organizations worldwide have adapted to new ways of working remotely. For a long, working from home was viewed as working from a ‘non-official environment.’ But now, given the current situation, working from home is seen as effective, cost-efficient, and safe.
During the pandemic, 88% of organizations made it mandatory for employees to work from home (Gartner). This means the entire global workforce is engaged in a virtual working environment.
Remote workforce monitoring solutions have provided an edge for industries whose employees are working remotely. It presents unique challenges, some of them unprecedented, for people managers. Although more than 75% of employees say they are more productive working from home (CoSo Cloud), reports indicate that employees must be remotely engaged.
Otherwise, many issues may arise that relate to communication gaps, misinterpretations, lost opportunities, psychological problems, etc. The following section discusses managing employees working from home effectively and gives a complete guide to working remotely.
Table of contents
5 Benefits of Remote Hiring
Now that working remotely has more advantages, companies have realized the benefits of remote hiring. The following are some of the benefits of hiring remote workers for organizations.
1. Remote Employees Turn Out To Be More Productive
Research by TINYpulse and Global Workplace Analytics suggests that 91% of employees who are working remotely feel more productive. The reasons are that employees save time when traveling, are less distracted, can work during their favorite times, feel valued, and feel in control.
Importantly, employees can stay with their family, friends, relatives, children, wives, husbands, pets, etc. All of this creates a positive experience. Employees do not need work-life balance as their families are only an arm’s length away.
2. Access to a Wider Talent Pool
Restricting hiring to only local candidates or candidates who can relocate to a place is counterproductive. It is restricting talent. If a good candidate is at a particular location and cannot relocate for some reason, then the organization traditionally may not have considered hiring this candidate, although unwillingly so.
But now the situation has changed. Location does not matter. The candidate could be anywhere. An organization will hire this candidate remotely and allow work from home. By doing this, the organization can access a wider pool of talent from anywhere worldwide.
3. Reduce Business Cost
Studies have estimated that hiring remote workers saves the business more than $10,000 per year per employee.
Much of the savings come in the form of real estate savings. Costs incurred on furniture, cleaners, and office supplies are reduced.
4. Reduces Wasted Productivity Hours
Research shows that working remotely reduces wasted employee hours or billable hours. On average, employees could be wasting eight hours per week on activities that are not related to work.
With remote workers, hours working on projects are the only billed hours. Organizations are not concerned about wasted billable hours.
5. Reduces Costs/Expenses for the Employees
It’s not just employers that benefit from remote working. Employees save a lot of money, too.
Expenses related to renting payments, lease payments, maintenance payments for their apartments, household expenses, relocation costs, travel expenses, taxes, electricity, gas, phone bills, equipment usage payments, internet expenses, and other allied or hidden costs can be reduced.
Although these costs may seem negligible at first, at the end of the year, cumulatively, the costs turn out to be a huge expense. Saving this expense is not just money saved but value-added.
Common Challenges Organizations Face with a ‘Work From Home’ Policy
With all the good things being said about working remotely and understanding tips on working remotely, there are challenges, too. Work-from-home policies have yet to mature. Work-from-home companies have now started to embrace a WFH culture.
The evolution of processes and technologies to support such a paradigm shift will take time. The following are some of the challenges that organizations might need to address.
Lack of a Face-to-Face Welcome
After an employee has been onboarded remotely, an organization might need orientation and induction programs for the new hire.
Typically, these are held face-to-face and for a few days. However, with the new situation, organizations must find ways to accommodate online induction and new hire orientation programs.
Information Accessibility
Not all information is accessible remotely. Some sensitive information is restricted to be accessed within a corporate Local Area Network (LAN). However, remote working has created the need to access such information resources outside corporate LANs.
Although VPN (Virtual Private Network) technologies allow safe access to network resources, VPNs are not always foolproof because everyday network attacks are becoming so sophisticated that organizations are reluctant to let anything out.
Social Isolation
The pandemic has made remote work-from-home employees sit inside the confines of their homes. They dare not step out because they fear transmitting or catching the virus from others.
Studies indicate that employees are feeling socially isolated when working remotely. They are becoming depressed more so because they are not able to get outside their homes. Ideally, they would want to visit the office sometimes and work from home sometimes.
Network Issues
Network technologies have not yet evolved to support the high demands of remote working. Offloading traditional corporate LAN and WAN-based tasks to the open wireless and wired Internet infrastructure is exerting the network infrastructure.
Public network infrastructures are still being fortified for integrity, speed, fidelity, and security. The technologies are still evolving.
So, it is common to hear from employees that they cannot download something, attend a meeting, or send an important piece of information because of network issues.
Staying Motivated
Working from home means not interacting personally and face-to-face with colleagues and peers. Staying in touch with them physically could positively affect the employee’s psyche.
Employees could feel motivated to accomplish their duties when constantly interacting with their stakeholders. But when working in isolation, the same level of engagement could go missing. There could be misunderstandings that may arise.
How, as a Business, can you Support your Remote Employees?
Communication
First and foremost is to engage constantly with the employees daily or at a periodic level.
The more the organization communicates, the more the employee feels integrated, secure, and involved when working remotely. The employee will feel less isolated and be more aware of their context.
Trust
Organizations should learn to trust their employees. When organizations invest in trust, they reap trust. Even if a few employees could become vagrants, many would reciprocate favorably.
When a business trusts an employee, research suggests that the employee feels valued. They make extra efforts to repay the trust by working effectively.
Virtual Fun Activities
Nothing stops the human resources department of a company from conducting fun activities virtually for employees. Virtual fun Fridays are becoming the norm.
At the end of the week, employees congregate virtually and have a fun-filled interaction with each other. This increases team bonding and team interaction.
Why Enterprises are Choosing Leapmax?
Leapmax is a complete work-from-home solution that enterprises have implemented. Leapmax is an artificial intelligence-enabled remote worker and employer platform with many integrated solutions.
Allowing workforce monitoring, remote collaboration, remote learning & training, reporting & analytics, data security, network health checks, etc. Leapmax is a complete enterprise employee management, mentoring, productivity, and monitoring solution.
Conclusion
Remote working and work-from-home will stay here for the long term. Studies suggest that soon, this could become the norm. Businesses have begun to understand the huge cost savings associated with virtual working and management.
Therefore, they have to look in a new direction to find ways to improve the ‘work from home’ paradigm and create policies that promote it.
