Before 2020, a question arose in knowledge-based organizations about whether digital connectivity had advanced so much that everyone needed to be together at the office to do their work. We got the answer during the lockdown, where we came to know that many people didn’t need to be with their colleagues onsite to do their jobs. Individuals, teams, and the workforce can work well even in a distributed format. Now we are facing the question of whether remote or major remote work from home is here to stay.
The work-from-home model offers many benefits to companies and their employees. The organizations can reduce or eliminate their real estate costs, hire and use talent globally without immigrant issues, and enjoy productivity gains. Workers also get geographic flexibility and eliminate commutes, leading to better work-life balance. Companies have some worries regarding communication, brainstorming, problem-solving, socialization, friendship, and data security in a work-from-home setup. To understand how you can capture the upside of working from home, this article could guide you.
What is Work From Home?
WFH or Work From Home means that employees can set up their workspaces at home and handle their whole workload from there, eliminating the need to commute to the office. Employees interact and communicate with their team colleagues from home, using a dedicated laptop/PC with internet access and business software. While some employees work exclusively from home, others work periodically from home and commute to the office half of the time.
Work From Home Benefits
Working from home offers numerous benefits to both employers and employees.. Here are some work-from-home advantages for both employees and employers:
1. Better Work-Life Balance
Working from home could provide more flexibility for the employee to manage their work hours. This allows individuals to create a schedule that aligns with their personal needs and professional commitments. The flexibility enables employees to integrate their work responsibilities with their personal lives. When employees work from home, they no longer have to spend hours driving in traffic, which directly saves them a lot of time that they can in turn use to spend with their friends, and family, or just to do things that they like, leading to an overall enhancement in work-life balance.
2. Boost in Efficiency
Employees feel more optimistic and productive when they have the opportunity to design their work schedule and environment. Furthermore, with fewer breaks and disturbances from coworkers, work-from-home employees are more productive than their in-office counterparts. Research has shown that 78% of employees think that hybrid and remote working has enhanced their productivity and the launch of a hybrid work model helped businesses increase performance by 22%.
3. Expense Reduction
When fewer employees come to the office than usual, organizations need less equipment and desk space to accommodate employees, leading to less infrastructure and rental costs. Organizations can save up to 2000 USD per employee by reducing office space and infrastructure needs. Working from home is beneficial to the employees as they can save money; no morning commute means no travel costs every day for coming to the office. Employees do not have to pay high rent costs to stay close to the office, resulting in more savings.
4. Attract and Keep Global Talent
Retaining global talent becomes easier when a work-from-home perk is given to employees. In a survey conducted, 83% of employees confirmed that working from home would be a big deciding factor in choosing their job. 73% of the employees were ready to switch from their current jobs, even at the same salary, if they were offered a job from home. Allowing employees to work from home makes it easier for companies to hire and retain global talent without location limits.
5. Positive Employee Experience
Working from home improves the overall employee experience inside the organization by providing greater flexibility, eliminating daily hassle in commute traffic, and promoting better work-life balance. As a result, a high-performance business culture emerges, in which workers strive to give their all and constantly grow at work.
Best Work From Home Management Practice
1. Acknowledge and Value Good Work
Working from home alone without meeting or seeing coworkers can cause isolation in the employees. Therefore, it is essential to give them constant validation and recognition. Employee recognition leads to more engaged and loyal employees. Making employee gratitude a core part of your office culture can improve productivity in a remote work-from-home setup.
2. Sustain Employee Trust
When employees believe they are not trusted by the organization, it can have an impact on their performance. As a result, before establishing a work-from-home plan, make sure you list what is expected of team members and what they may anticipate from staff. Do not micromanage the team because it may diminish individual output.
3. Establish Communication Rules
When working from home, it is critical to have fast communication with the team while also establishing clear communication guidelines. Be proactive in communicating with your team without overwhelming them with messages and calls. Follow these communication guidelines for your team:
- Don’t spam your team with texts!
- Schedule brainstorming sessions every day.
- Set expectations early in the week (for example, about timing).
- Try out new communication platforms (such as Slack and Microsoft Teams).
- Establish some communication standards (for example, tone of voice).
4. Minimize Distractions
Employees should create a separate workspace so that they can focus on their work throughout the day, giving them consistent efficiency. To save time from online distractions, they can limit time spent on emails, social media platforms, and websites that are completely unrelated to work. The company should provide employees with a unified platform for project management, task management, and communication so that employees do not have to switch between different applications, which would eventually distract them from their work.
1. Collaboration and Communication Tools
To help employees cooperate when working from home, effective communication solutions should include capabilities like instant messaging, video calling, phone calls, report writing, and support for both private and public communication channels.
2. Screen Sharing and Recording Tools
Screen sharing can help employees understand each other’s perspectives and the issues they face by providing the right context. Screen sharing and recording tools can help support teams in providing customers with better and faster solutions.
3. Digital Workspace Platform
Employees can get overwhelmed by using lots of tools instead a better approach could be to provide them with a better digital workspace platform in their organization which can help the employees collaborate, communicate, and manage their work without switching between applications all the time. The digital workplace is a central platform that provides employees with access to the entire set of digital tools required to properly manage all of their work duties.
4. Cloud Storage Solutions
A central cloud storage would allow employees to access and search for the latest version of their files which they might need for their work from any location and on any device. The company should be careful with the cloud storage tools such that it is reliable, economical, secure, and compliant with all industry standards.
5. Project Management Platforms
The correct project management platform will help remote teams increase the efficiency of their project work and tasks while ensuring complete transparency. It reduces the number of back-and-forth communications and ensures that everyone has the same kind of understanding about a situation as others do.
Challenges Faced by Employees in Work From Home
1. Loneliness
Employees who do not have casual social connections with their coworkers may feel isolated and can develop communication problems with the rest of the team. If an employee has the feeling of solitude then he/she may not feel close to the team and will be hesitant to ask simple queries. Employees who have been compelled to work from home for an extended period or who are permanently remote may experience greater social isolation, which can lead to burnout, lower efficiency, and higher intention to leave.
2. Overworking
Most of the managers believe that employees do not work with the same efficiency as they do in the office than in work from home. Hence the expectations of managers increase and the employees are burdened with overwork. The employees also have to manage their personal life and professional lives in the same house which makes it difficult for employees to create boundaries leading to often exhaustion, burnout, and a decrease in productivity.
3. Absence of a Sense of Community
Employees interact with their colleagues once a month on a video call, it can be challenging to establish a sense of community and bonding in the employees with much less interaction between them. The room for social interactions is very less in work from home and hence the feeling of being a part of a community is hard to establish.
Challenges Faced by Employers in Work From Home
1. Fostering and Sustaining Trust
Employees who do not interact face-to-face may experience some clear trust challenges. 50 percent of remote employees feel they are often left out of big decisions and their team is less trustful of them when they are working from home. Even for the managers it is difficult to trust the employees because they don’t see them working in front of them. The continuous mistrust from team members can lead to the feeling of being left out which might ultimately lead to a decrease in the productivity of the team.
2. Distributed Teams Across Various Locations and Time Zones
Work from home allows companies to recruit talent globally which implies that they have a completely distributed team globally working in different team zones. Forcing all the employees to be available at the same time can be a daunting task as it can lead to disturbing the work-life balance of the employees. Allowing remote employees to work according to their schedule also doesn’t solve the problem. Therefore managers have to book everything in advance taking all employees on board before scheduling a meeting.
3. Remote Collaboration
Collaboration is a major issue in working from home as employees do not work in the same office which leads to many problems. Whether you have a minor question or need to organize a team-wide meeting, everything must be booked ahead of time to ensure availability – all of which can eat up a significant amount of time and divert employees’ attention away from their primary responsibilities.
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Conclusion
Though the epidemic may have triggered remote work for thousands of people worldwide, it is far from the only reason to work from home. Indeed, the benefits of working from home are many that it is undoubtedly the best road forward. work from home is going to be the future of employment, and it is here to stay. Despite some limitations, the benefits of working from home much exceed the drawbacks. Naturally, adopting a work-from-home strategy for the first time can be difficult, but it is not impossible. With a strong company culture and the right tools, you can successfully implement a work-from-home strategy in your organization that aligns with your long-term business goals as well as your employees’ needs.
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