Ever wondered you’ll be working remotely in 2020?
Well, the workplace of the future is looking to be simpler than we imagine. Employees having the flexibility to work at their own pace with teammates across the globe.
Keeping that in mind, this question is no longer applicable “is remote work here to stay?” By the way things are moving, it seems like the remote work is now becoming the new normal.
Let us dig into facts as to why work from home is now becoming a trend:
Work from home trend 1: Improved transparency
In the early days, most employees tend to opt to work from home due to certain factors such as less workload or to relax at home and work. However, the COVID-19 situation has turnedthe tables once and for all.
Employees have started turning in more work hours, they have become more productive, and have shown increased transparency in their work. Not to mention, over the last few years’ businesses have started showing transparency across the jobs market.
And when there’s remote working, transparency takes on a deeper perspective. Businesses need to stay open with their interactions as they come across with people working from home. Regular meetings, designing instruction manual, onboarding sessions, and fostering a sense of a normal working community despite knowing the fact that it’s a remote workplace.
Teams working from home should feel comfortable getting answers to their questions in a specific amount of time to foster a better working environment.
Work from home trend 2: Flexibility in working hours
Remote workers are no longer different than any other in-house employee across the world – and talent leaders need to understand this to start mitigating flexible work hours.
The work shift has preconditioned businesses mindset, the reason why they have become comfortable with people working in their comfort zone.
With strict rules and regulations, almost the entire world has started staying indoors, be it kids, employees, or parents. This simply means, not all workers get the leisure of working during the same hours they used to within the office.
During video meets, often you would find children entering the room seeking for attention from their parents. Therefore, the ongoing scenario has led employees to become flexible with their work giving them the opportunity of a remote workplace.
Work from home trend 3: Socializing remotely
The work from home trend may increase the feeling of isolation for most employees. It is said that around 19 percent of workers are already struggling with loneliness, and with the pandemic work from home policies, this feeling will only rise.
The anxiety level coupled with the work from home stress may incur mental and health illness and impact employees’ workflow on the longer run.
One of the major reasons why they say, human contact is essential. This will help the employee feel connected to their colleagues, their company, and the world especially amid the pandemic times where no human contact isn’t just restricted but has become mandatory.
Organizations should come up with something to maintain employee engagement even during pandemic times.
Well, there are end number of ways a company could incorporate these – requesting everyone to keep their videos switched on while holding meetings in a positive way or by holding regular video meetings. Organizations can also come up with post-work socialization activities, in fact, they should become the new norm. For instance, movie nights, game nights, or dance-offs can be organized through video sessions or websites. Hosting a poster event online can be an interesting event.
All these events are mandatory to keep employees bonded even while working remotely. Team collaboration tools such as Slack or Teams could be used by talent leaders to have specific conversations that are not related to work. Separate groups can be created, this allows employees to have a water-cooler experience where any employee can talk about topics that strike their interest.
Loneliness can cause a great amount of damage to the way people live and work.
Work from home trend 4: Strict IT rules
Work from home offers multiple advantages, but this can only be possible with strict IT and security measures.
There are higher chances for computers to get hacked or attacked by a virus if precautionary measures are not followed. Cyber threats can cause damage to your workflow, your computers may shut down, all your work may vanish within a nick of time.
This simply means keeping your work at stake since this will delay your workflow by a day or two. Worse case, a single virus attack can lead to data breaches or information of clients being hacked. Therefore, IT and security play a crucial role for people working remotely.
Work from home trend 5: Increased remote communication
The new norm of remote work has shown great results and have to change the way employers communicate with their employees.
Emails have been the primary way for communication some years back, however, this form or communication may slow down as we’ve started adapting work from home trends in 2020. For teams working remotely, the mode of communication needs to be transformed. This is essential considering thousands of companies that are working remotely that too from different time zones. Video calls and video conferencing have become the newest method of interacting with team members. Perhaps this is the best method to stay connected with internal staff as well as third party staff.
