Working remotely offers many advantages, yet can pose its own set of challenges. To ensure employees remain productive and create an atmosphere which encourages collaboration and trust between team members.
Remote work is a flexible workplace model that enables employees to choose their location, work hours and style of working from anywhere in the world. While this flexible arrangement offers employees more freedom and engagement while increasing productivity levels, it may come with its own set of challenges such as loneliness, burnout or communication difficulties.
Work-Life Balance
One of the key advantages of remote work for employees is that it offers them a greater work-life balance, which has many positive ramifications, such as improved physical health and reduced stress levels.
Recent FlexJobs research found that 67% of workers who work flexible schedules cited work-life balance as the main driver behind their desire for flexible working environments. A healthy work-life balance improves productivity, employee satisfaction and job performance – three key metrics.
Work-life balance allows employees to spend more time with their families – an especially important benefit for younger generations. However, not all employees share a similar opinion on this matter.
As such, some older generations view overworking as ideal, while younger generations seek employers that respect their lifestyle and prioritize self-care.
Baby Boomers were raised during the Great Depression, where many families worked long hours to provide for themselves and their families. At an early age they learned to put career goals before any personal responsibilities, often staying at one company for several decades before leaving to start another venture.
Workplace habits may become unhealthy over time and breaking them without help can be challenging.
Generation Xers, those born between 1965 and 1980, have shown greater awareness of the need to maintain work-life balance by seeking more flexible jobs.
Businesses of all types can realize many advantages from this initiative, including attracting top talent, reducing churn, and making employees feel satisfied and valued.
Employees benefit from greater autonomy and respect from an employer who values them, though it’s essential for workers to communicate their needs and boundaries to managers and coworkers.
One major benefit of remote work is enabling businesses to maintain operations during an unanticipated disaster or pandemic. A professional services company that implemented a remote-optional work policy before COVID-19 emerged was able to continue operations uninterrupted.
As previously outlined, remote work offers numerous advantages that more businesses are beginning to embrace as part of their flexible working model. If your organization doesn’t yet offer this flexible working option, now may be the time to start offering this feature.
Flexibility
One of the greatest advantages of remote work is its flexibility. Employees can select a schedule that best meets their needs, giving them more time for things that matter most to them and working from wherever they feel most at ease rather than having to commute daily to an office in an otherwise congested area.
Flexible work arrangements enable people to efficiently manage their workload and meet their goals without altering their lifestyles, maintaining a healthy work-life balance that improves health and productivity.
But, creating and maintaining flexible work options can be tricky. Many organizations struggle with how and whether to accommodate staff with various needs; often leaving this work up to benefits or payroll departments alone.
Leadership must recognize the benefits of flexible working and take measures to implement it successfully. They should listen carefully to employees who request this option and offer all resources and support necessary for creating such an environment.
As part of their responsibility as employers, businesses should also ensure they provide their employees with a safe working environment that makes working remotely as simple as possible. This will allow employees to focus on their job without distractions from home life or any other factors in their life getting in their way.
Flexibility can also help companies maintain a diverse, highly skilled workforce while simultaneously recruiting new talent. Furthermore, flexibility enables employees to better control those aspects of their work they don’t enjoy and give them the chance to improve those areas where needed.
Employers must remember that in order to understand whether their flexibility policies are having the desired effects, it is necessary to measure them and monitor how effective they are at delivering solutions that can be adjusted or changed as required. Employers can do this through collecting data and testing solutions available so they can be adjusted and changed as necessary.
Diverse Talent Pools
Employing diverse teams has numerous advantages. Companies that prioritize inclusion can attract top talent, improve workplace flexibility and productivity, reduce bias in the workplace, and ultimately achieve their diversity policy goals more easily.
Recruitment of remote workers can help your team become more diverse, by tapping into underserved groups such as women or those with criminal records.
As an HR professional, it is always crucial to remember the significance of recruiting diverse candidates – particularly when reviewing candidates with remote jobs.
Without a formal talent pool system in place, it can be challenging to weed through all the candidates for hire. That is why it is vital to update your talent pool as soon as you make new hires – this way your sourcing pool remains current at all times.
Set up a landing page and community for every candidate you are recruiting so you can easily search by background and skill set. Also create an automated update process so that as people change skills or acquire new roles in the future.
When hiring software developers, for example, using social media sites provides an easy and comprehensive way of reaching a much broader talent pool than is available locally; furthermore, your employees will have an easier time connecting with you and finding you.
By creating an array of diverse candidates, having a diverse pool will assist in quickly filling any positions that arise quickly in the future. This is particularly crucial during times when talent shortages are prevalent – it enables you to stay one step ahead of competitors!
Diverse candidates bring their own insights to the table, which can lead to more inventive solutions for your company’s issues that you might otherwise miss. Diverse talent may even uncover issues you aren’t even aware exist yet – which can save both time and money in the future.
Diversity within your talent pool will allow you to better understand the needs and preferences of customers, which allows you to tailor services specifically to them and increase the number of customers who choose you while decreasing marketing costs.
Easier to Scale
Establishing and managing a strong team of employees with diverse skill sets is integral to any company’s rapid expansion. By having such a group in place, costly downtime can be avoided and expansion can go smoothly.
Remote teams can also help a company expand its business more rapidly by cutting overhead expenses such as office space rental and employee benefits costs. As technology, best practices, and tools evolve, remote work will become an ever-more prevalent part of organizational structures; giving companies the ability to take advantage of its many benefits.
As part of scaling a remote team, you must ensure everyone works effectively and efficiently together. One way of doing so is creating a clear communication plan for remote employees – documenting processes and allocating tasks so everyone knows exactly what their responsibilities are and when.
Automating some of your workflows, particularly project management, can help increase team productivity. A good project management tool allows you to assign deadlines and monitor progress – making it simpler to coordinate work efforts across teams.
Staying abreast of news and updates pertaining to workflow changes or new projects can keep your remote team aligned, which makes scaling easier.
No matter your business goals or staffing levels, making newcomers feel included and welcome is key to their successful transition and integration into your workplace. Staying connected through social media and virtual team-building activities will allow them to quickly get up to speed with work life.
If you’re planning to add new members to your remote team, conducting surveys and meetings with each one could also be an excellent way to gather feedback on workplace culture as well as employees’ perceptions about work-from-home policies.
If you’re planning to scale your remote team, be sure to have a strong leader who understands the challenges associated with remote work. They will guide your efforts and ensure all efforts are directed toward meeting your goals; share their experiences, give insights about managing remote teams as a manager can be tough or exciting; offer helpful tips on reaching success; they may also have valuable advice for making it all happen successfully.
