Is Remote Working Environments Efficient or Ineffective?

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In the past, remote working was traditionally less efficient than physical working environments. This is because the specialists and officials in the higher-ranking levels will find it difficult to oversee the performance and operations of the employees.

But after the impacts of COVID-19, many businesses were restrained from working efficiently in brick-and-mortar offices. Most companies of all types were compelled to adopt work-from-home policies and connect with their employees over the internet. This article will educate the reader on using technology solutions to overcome the locational barriers and smoothly operate under work-from-home business approaches.

Remote Working- Then and Now

THEN
Remote working environments were a rare approach in many countries a decade ago. This is because no one believed in the potential of remote working since it was a new idea to follow. In the past, most of these remote working policies were a temporary solution until the administrators and managers decided to shift back to physical working environments. During this time, commercial and industrial leaders had a blurred idea of remote working; they feared the fact that employees would not perform optimally, and the relationship and power strat between workers and managers would be confused. When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted commercial, industrial and domestic lives, forcing people to stay away from human exposure and threatening them, they became susceptible to a fatal disease. Then, many business leaders asked questions: Do we have to be tethered to an office? Can we work from home?
NOW
Day by day, businesses explore more opportunities in working from home. The more COVID-19 impacted the businesses, the fog between businesses and the advantages is clearing up. It is believed that in post-COVID times the collaboration of teams has increased by a whopping amount. Now companies use versatile communication systems, robust workflow management tools, task automation protocols powered by AI and ML models, and tight and reliable security systems to safeguard sensitive information. The hassle of frequent meetings that take up so much time can be completed in a target-oriented manner. Working-from-home also allows the team to create a powerful culture of accountability, have a better fact-based measure of performance, efficiency and reliability metrics of teams, optimally utilise asynchronous communication tools and oversee target-oriented teams.

Technologies That Cannot Be Missed By Remote-Working Companies

There are many technologies that companies can use to recover from COVID-19 impacts and make their remote working approaches better, faster and more productive. Here are a few technologies you can consider if you are planning to shift from brick-and-mortar offices to online working spaces.
Cloud-driven Work Tools
Many businesses rely on cloud storage and computing tools because they are more efficient in allowing quick access for backups and a centralised point via multiple devices like in OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive and more. It did not take long for technology to become a norm in both physical and virtual working environments. This is the foundation technology to liberate tethered working teams to be more at ease when sharing files, bouncing ideas and optimising operations. It is cost-efficient, convenient, and scalable when providing a seamless, target-oriented and secured experience for team players and leaders.
Collaborative Communication Platforms
Unified communication tools is another leading technology that companies adopt to interconnect all sorts of communication channels to a single source. This technology is the key pillar in substantially improving the productivity, collaboration and communication capacities of businesses. Real-time communication platforms like Skype, Slack, Google Suite, TigernixJoin are a few of the best collaborative video conferencing platforms in the market. These tools offer amazing collaboration idea-sharing options and are rich with efficient factors that are needed to optimise the communication experiences between businesses teams. They can be applied to manage meetings, check-ins, conferences, webinars, sales pitches, interviews and more. With engaging communication seen on a company-wide scale, companies will not be affected by the communication barriers that they lose when shifting to remote working environments.
Project Management Software
Managing, implementing and overseeing projects online might seem very inefficient at first. But with the adoption of a robust, modular and integrated Project Management Software, it is not as bad as it sounds. These solutions allow time management tools, task trackers, task prioritisation curves, delegation metres, and collaboration platforms for object-oriented project teams. Another intriguing feature of this software is that it allows cloud-based partitioned arenas for multiple project teams to meet the desired objectives of several projects simultaneously. This way, the project teams can be punctual, more efficient, and more collaborative than ever. Solutions like TigernixPMS allows team partners to automatically keep track of the performance statistics of all team partners, allowing them to have comprehensive reports on individual employees or project teams is a matter of a single click; making online project management practices even better than hands-on project execution.
Remote HR and Payroll Systems
Human Resource Management System Solutions like TigernixHRMS can be used by companies to keep track of the performance, strengths, weaknesses and potential of all employees under a single screen. Automated payroll systems, employee profiles, easy-to-use dashboards synced with tax forms, timesheets, time management, and paid time off records make managing your employees effortless. These systems are unbiased and efficient, therefore, boosting employee retention rates and employee-based investments more fact-based than estimated capital decisions. These systems can be linked with Talent and Recruitment Systems to ensure all employee’s talents are honed and capitalised the company plus the fresh talents have all talents required to fit into remote working environments. This technology helps managers and employees to have strong relationships even when working under extreme operational events.

Are There Companies That Stopped Following Work-from-home Policies?

Remote working policies must be implemented in relation to the work culture followed by businesses. If the ethics of the business and their level of technology-savviness do not tally with the basic requirements needed to implement effective remote working environments, they can lead to failures in operations. There are a few companies that stopped using remote working environments to execute their functions, namely:

Best Buy: Best Buy believed that the employees were “too liberated” when working under the work-from-home policies. In 2004 they implemented ROWE (Results-Oriented Work Environment), which targeted boosting the accomplishments, dedication, and productivity regardless of where they work from. After almost a decade (9 years), Best Buy found that the ROWE program to quote is “fundamentally wrong”.

Approaches That Best Buy Could Have made?

Accountability issues and leadership issues are the consequences of ineffectively implementing remote working technologies. The principles and objectives shared in the ROWE program should be backed up by necessary training programs, employee morale and satisfaction and also strong leadership. A different approach to revive remote sensing practices would have led to a healthy recovery for Best Buy in the past.

Reddit: Reddit is a distributed organisation, and the need to have a reworking approach seems to be the obvious way to improve their operations. But it did not turn out as well as they expected. It was reported that the remote workers were not as efficient as they estimated therefore the collaboration goals expected before implementation was not met. However, the productivity of teams was stable. What suffered was the quality of collaboration in the teams.

Approaches That Reddit Could Have made?

The quick responses (instantaneous requests, recommendations and feedback plus brainstorming within teams) in the physical environment is too comfortable for companies like Reddit. This is why they could have followed a blended work environment where they can meet once a month or every six months and bounce ideas to feel the leisure of performing with their peers.

StatusPage: StatusPage says, ‘Remote work isn’t for everyone…’. They believe that employees were having a hard time enduring the loneliness and wrapping their heads around a sense of self-discipline. They believe that remote working is a “poor replacement” to natural human interaction in the physical world. So they stopped practising remote working.

Approaches That StartUs Could Have made?

During the recruitment stages, employers should evaluate the tech-savviness of the employees and managers. Reviewing their experience, skills and determination when remote working is a critical aspect before starting work-from-home practices. Providing necessary training would have avoided these situations so that they would effectively use communication technologies, and managers and supervisors would be capable of keeping track of employees’ performance, idle times, and monitoring whether they slack off.

Yahoo: In 2013, Yahoo (out of all the big fishes in the technology industry) withdrew from remote working environments because they believed that work-from-home was a less innovative solution for operations. Employees lost the trust and reliance they once had with their superiors. The productivity analytics metrics were showing odd figures, and the collaboration of teams started getting fragmented, so they decided to shift to physical working environments.

Approaches That Yahoo Could Have made?

Communication is key! The foundations of being effective and efficient teamwork are robust communication and hyperconnectivity. Virtual team builders like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Slack, Discord, TigernixJoin (https://www.tigernix.com/software/video-conferencing-system) and more can be easily utilised to overcome the limitation they face. Yahoo could have invested more in collaborative technologies and optimised the communications and collaboration platforms to strengthen the bond between superior officers and staff members.

Will The Future be Completely Relying on Virtual Technologies for Businesses?

Remote working is a soon-to-be-normalised way of operating for business teams. Businesses are enormously transforming to their digital and virtualised counterparts to make smarter decisions while connecting many talents and potential clients across the globe. This approach is later going to be the ‘new normal’ because big companies like Facebook and Google are motivating businesses to make good use of technology and grow their companies without limits. Work-from-home policies will soon be widely used by many companies to ensure that their CRM operations, data analytics teams and other business functions that do not require hands-on experiences will be optimised while saving an abundance of money, unnecessary efforts and time. So, being updated with the best technologies for remote working companies is a piece of knowledge that no commercial and industrial business cannot afford to overlook anymore.
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