Remote work has transformed the landscape of businesses worldwide. Though many teleworking professionals have begun to return to offices, in many ways the workforce will never return to the status quo. Some degree of remote work will likely become standard, even if hybridized alongside a traditional office model. Remote work brings solid advantages to businesses and employees, but also offers challenges.
The New Frontier of Remote Working
After overcoming the initial hurdle of accommodating remote work, many professionals have found that remote work offers advantages that can be leveraged permanently. Many employees enjoy the freedom and flexibility of working from home.
In a recent GetAbstract survey, 43% of full-time employees who responded indicated that they would prefer to work remotely long-term. The logistics of working from home is growing on business owners and managers too- allowing them to attract new talent, with geography being less essential to bring a talented new prospect into your collaborative process.
While many companies have elected to allow some kind of permanent remote work policy after the end pandemic eases social distancing requirements on offices, many are finding that adapting to this new system is not without its challenges. Offices were designed for decades with the mentality of having everything on hand for collaborative work, and employers are finding themselves having to reinvent the wheel with this new workplace dynamic.
A Hasty Solution
The haste at which many companies transitioned to remote work in 2020 has led to many remote workforces being cobbled together by a series of imperfect solutions to a series of persistent problems. While many workforces hopped on Zoom quickly for remote meetings, or found collaborative solutions in platforms like Microsoft Teams, many have continued to use assortments of different tools to respond to logistical challenges, with this patchwork creating its own logistical challenge. The systems that were used to enable remote work are now hampering its efficiency and will continue to as long as workforces can’t adopt a more permanent solution.
Organizing the Disorganized
A company that aims to increase productivity from its mobile workforce will see opportunities to improve. This disorganization can be solved through proper considerations of the challenges your employees face from being disconnected from the work ecosystem. Giving employees a virtual space to coordinate work as they normally would in an office can be an asset, but even more so when the solution is designed around providing the organizational solutions that an office environment typically would. Simplified storage organization, cross-platform automation, and single sign-on compatibilities can help employees more successfully and efficiently navigate the multiple tools they utilize in their work and ease the problems of disconnected teams.
Declutter and Unify
Emerging forces in the tech world have eagerly risen to the challenge of tackling the problems of the modern workforce. While Zoom became a household name almost overnight with workplaces flocking to the video conferencing software, other tech solutions are looking forward to the more nuanced problems in a hybridized workplace. Companies like Simpplr, a modern intranet provider, for instance, who specialize in internal communications, are creating solutions for curating virtual space to fill the role an office would’ve created otherwise. Unifying the idea of a collaborative space along with an assortment of tools to solve logistical challenges that proximity previously solved, solutions like these seem to present a path forward for workplaces. These tools have a massive benefit on the unique challenges of hybridized workforce, as employees will put out better work at a higher rate if they have access to all tools in one place, as well as having one place where they feel they are part of a community. The future of collaboration and company culture lies in the digital space rather than the office.
The Future
It is increasingly unlikely that employee ecosystems will ever match what they were before the pandemic. Change offers more than just challenges though. Changes to the way companies work and collaborate can offer a unique opportunity to improve both productivity for the company and quality of life for employees. While the future of the workplace isn’t entirely certain, the only certain way to fall behind is inaction.
