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Introduction
According to statistics, over the past ten years, the number of people who work remotely has increased by 115% and it has been on the rise for years now, the COVID-19 pandemic may have pressed the fast-forward button on this trend. However, this model is not suitable for every employee and not every employer. In this article, I’ll try to examine the challenges of working from home and to find out how to overcome them.
If you work remotely, you do not need to follow a dress code. You choose a convenient schedule for yourself and do not waste time on commute every day. The prospect of swapping out your business suit to pyjamas sounds tempting, but how does it affect your productivity? Today, a record number of people in the US and the UK work from home. Experts believe there will be even more such employees in the future. Researchers at the Boston consulting firm Strategy Analytics assess the situation as follows: the proportion of remote employees worldwide will grow from 38.8% in 2016 to 42.5% in 2022. The studies also show that in 10 years, every third person will work remotely.
Nothing is surprising in such forecasts. A 2017 survey by US-based job search site FlexJobs found that 81% of employees considered working from home to be the most attractive benefit of flexible working conditions. More and more companies are meeting new demands by offering employees remote work or work from home. In 2020, Amazon announced that it would hire 1,100 telecommuters by the end of the year, and Apple has recently posted jobs from home.
Greater engagement rate
At first glance, working from home has significant benefits. A growing number of researching confirms that employees who work remotely (including from home) perform better in their daily tasks than their office counterparts. In 2014, a study was conducted among employees of the Chinese travel service Ctrip, which compared the performance of employees who regularly work remotely and those who worked exclusively in the office. The result is surprising: remote workers made 13.5% more calls with offering a service compared to their office colleagues, mainly doing two daily quotas. They quit half as often as office workers, and their level of job satisfaction was higher.
According to a 2016 survey of remote American workers, approximately 91% of people working from home felt that their office productivity was declining. In a Canada Life Group survey, remote workers rated their productivity at 7.7 on a 10-point scale, compared to 6.5 for open office workers. A recent Gallup study found that employees who work from home three to four times a week are much more likely to feel “involved” compared to those who walk to the office every day.
Disadvantages of the system
Remote work is gaining popularity, but not everyone sees the benefit in it. The LSE company conducted a study during which more than 500 employees and managers were interviewed. Respondents reported that the benefits of being flexible have despaired over time. Employees stopped seeing privilege in this and began to behave in the same way as their office colleagues, and the productivity of the two groups became equal.
The respondents spoke about the lack of professional support from their employers. The study found that the quality of communication between employees was low, and the opportunity to communicate face-to-face was infrequent. As a result, workers began to feel dissatisfaction with their superiors, as they believed that it hinders their professional development. As a result, their level of loyalty to the company dramatically decreased. A similar conclusion was released by some large corporations, such as IDB and Yahoo, who returned to the traditional scheme of work after the decline in the productivity of employees who switched to “remote work”.
One of the problems here is that the psychology of a person who has switched to remote work does not undergo significant changes. If you are unproductive in the office, then most likely nothing will change when you work from home. At the same time, many things will distract you at home: TV, household chores or food in the refrigerator. Working efficiently requires developing individual strategies of behaviour. A 2017 study by Regus found that remote workers feel lonely, because of lack of communication with colleagues and getting distracted by noisy households. Working from home can improve your productivity, but it can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness.
Shared workspace
To solve this problem, you need to find a place that has all the benefits of working from home but does not allow the employee to shirk his/her responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, as the popularity of work from home has grown, there has been a growing need for co-working spaces where team members can work together and make useful social contacts with people of similar interests. In 2017, there were 15,500 co-working spaces in the world. For comparison: in 2016 there were 12,100 of them, and in 2021 this figure will increase to 22,400.
Barnaby Lashbrooke, developer of the virtual helper Time etc. and the owner of the corresponding service, is sure that office spaces will remain in demand for a long time and many people work most productively in the office. Lashbrook realised that not all employees in his company found working from home the best solution. He decided not to give up the office, but he allowed employees to work remotely at will. Lashbrook believes that some companies and workers moved too quickly to remote work, not realising that the scheme was not for everyone. “Not everyone is efficient at home,” he explains. “If you force everyone to work from home without doing any preliminary analysis, you will face a real risk: employees who need an energetic environment and communication with other people will become isolated and ineffective, which is bad for business.”
One of the biggest challenges remote workers face is the lack of communication. Kudzi (Director of Creator Community, TikTok) argues that traditional offices or coworking spaces are the best environments for productive meetings and networking. “Those conversations at the coffee point often become a source of new knowledge. During this interaction, employees exchange a lot of information about the current state of affairs in the company, says Kudzi. – I think that the opportunity to come to the office from time to time is essential. Even if you work for yourself, it is still useful to find time for informal communication with other people. “
Finding balance
Of course, the possibility of working from home should not be completely ruled out. It’s about finding the best option. For example, you can use a shared office space to hold meetings and complete deadlines, while creative tasks that require privacy can be done at home. Such a scheme will erase the psychological line between working from home and the office. Judy Heminsley, the author of the lifestyle blog “All Things Bright & Good” and the book “Work from Home”, argues that many remote workers find it difficult to get away from their nine-to-six schedule, so they find it easier to stick to the old routine at first.
“It took a lot of people I’ve talked with about remote workers for several years to stop working ring-to-ring finally,” Heminsley explains. “People have worked this way since the Industrial society. When you first start working remotely, you have no framework to rely on. “
The working day should be structured wherever the employee goes. This is the only way he or she can work remotely with maximum efficiency. Set deadlines for tasks, take regular breaks. Don’t do multiple things at the same time. You don’t need to work from nine to six, but you need to decide what hours you work with maximum efficiency and be disciplined.
Author: Artemiy Volodin
Source: artemiyvolodin.com
