The Advantages and Disadvantages of Working Remotely for Employees and Employers.
ZAKARIA BENTAHAR
Agile Human-Centric Coach | Entrepreneur | Digital Transformation Expert | Scrum master| Agile Mentor | QA expert
The 2020 global pandemic has made remote work more popular than anyone imagined. Businesses and professionals worldwide take this type of working arrangement very seriously.
According to Gartner's forecasts, 53% of Americans and 31% of all workers globally will be either hybrid or fully remote through the year 2022. Many businesses suffered severe financial setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and some are still struggling. Offering remote employment opportunities is a standard solution to this issue because it has been demonstrated to positively impact resource use and efficiency in most circumstances, leading to an improved bottom line.
Many organizations have only embraced remote work up until now, primarily due to productivity and security concerns and a need to understand why allowing flexible work options is such an important initiative to implement. Remote work adoption is expected to grow as employee expectations shift, but not all organizations are prepared to deal with the fallout.
As we've long known, remote work has many advantages and disadvantages for workers and employers. So, I'm listing out some pros and cons of working from home—some you may already be aware of and some that may open your eyes even more to remote work's impact on employers, employees, and the economy
The main advantages of remote work are:
The main disadvantages of remote work:
The three main advantages of remote work
1. Time and money savings?
Commuting usually requires time, energy, and money, especially during rush hour. Without a doubt, these hours and funds can be spent considerably more productively.
The bottom line is that with remote work, hundreds of hours and dollars can be saved annually, and our carbon footprint can be minimized.
Nevertheless, employees typically have additional costs when working remotely, such as power, heating or cooling, use of equipment, and so on.
Many organizations that enable remote work and save with office space, parking space, travel cost reimbursements, and so on cover part of these additional costs when their employees work remotely.
An excellent recommendation for companies and employees is to find a method to split the bill.
2. Higher productivity due to reduced distractions.
With remote work, individuals can avoid distractions such as unimportant meetings, office gossip, informal phone calls, and interruptions from coworkers.
If there are no extra distractions at home, including personal calls, pets, domestic tasks, etc. (more about that later), job productivity can be significantly boosted with remote work.
The employee can have a more flexible schedule with remote employment. They can modify their job to their biological cycle and energy level during the day.
Employees can also arrange their home workspace as suits them best. These are all huge advantages of working remotely.
Nevertheless, some individuals could have issues with personal time management when out of the office. For employers, it's recommended to organize time management courses or coaching for such employees to make sure they reach their full productivity potential.
3. This has become the new norm.
Employees anticipate their employers to permit remote work during COVID-19, particularly if their physical attendance is not required.
Nowadays, flex-time and flex-space policies are unquestionably recognized as modern and employee-friendly company characteristics.
With a flexible time and space policy, you can find or recruit talent with nearly no geographic restrictions.
And if you can provide excellent working conditions and a terrific environment, there is talent everywhere waiting to assist you in realizing your company's objectives.
The three main disadvantages of remote work
Like everything else in life, remote work has some significant drawbacks, but these can be effectively offset or even turned into benefits.
1. Leadership and teamwork can be more difficult.
Adjustments must be made, and new skills must be developed before beginning to work remotely. Employees must learn how to efficiently conduct online meetings, engage with colleagues remotely, and use various IT technologies.
Although the change might be challenging, new skills are always appreciated and help people and businesses advance. It can be trickier to manage a remote workforce. It may be more difficult to foster a sense of unity and lack of control. The top two recommendations for distant leaders are
With remote leadership, all the administration's best practices make the difference between being poor and great leaders.?
As a result, remote leaders must put even more effort into honing their leadership abilities, again to everyone's advantage.
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2. Feelings of isolation
Whether we're talking about workers or bosses, we're all social beings who need one another to survive. One of the leading causes of depression and poor productivity is isolation.
Be careful to avoid feeling lonely while working remotely, either for yourself as a remote worker or for your remote employees if you are an employer.?
3. Home distractions and a lack of work-life balance
There are no office distractions when working remotely, but on the other hand, working from home might present a whole host of new diversions, such as children, pets, hobbies, TV, and so forth.
It is tremendously advantageous if a remote worker has a workspace free of these distractions. When working remotely, it could be more challenging to strike the correct balance between work and personal life. There are two major pitfalls. The first is working continuously because the computer desk is constantly nearby.
?For workaholics, in particular, this is risky. In the long run, productivity at work rapidly falls if you work nonstop without appropriate breaks or any life-work balance.
The second trap is splitting your time between work and family or leisure activities, for instance, struggling to multitask, working for a short while, giving attention to family members, working again, and so on.
Even though working hours are pretty flexible when working remotely, it makes sense to give your all during working hours (even if they are very flexible) and to be accessible during non-working hours.
How about the Employers??
Remote employment has several advantages for both employers and workers. Remote work offers employees the freedom and flexibility they crave, and organizations benefit from happier, more efficient teams. Here are some Advantages.?
1. Improved Retention, Engagement, and Loyalty
According to studies, employees favor working remotely. It has also been demonstrated that contented workers perform better since they are more involved. Additionally, 81% of content workers have a stronger loyalty toward their employers, which increases their likelihood of sticking around and promoting the business to others.
Implementing a remote work policy demonstrates to employees your concern, which increases the possibility that these feelings will be returned, whether you did so in response to relevant employee input or just because you want to provide them more freedom.
2. Improved Performance and Timeliness, Leading to Higher Productivity
According to research, people who work remotely are up to 40% less likely to make mistakes than those who work in an office. When you add that to the fact that working remotely eliminates numerous factors that contribute to employee tardiness, such as commuting and standing in a lengthy queue for coffee in the morning, you'll discover that productivity increases when employees work from home.
3. Improved Communication and Collaboration
There is a lot of extra conversation at work, which is only sometimes a problem unless it hinders productivity. Working remotely compels workers to communicate with those they need to when they need to and with less wasted time. Because team members on different teams are only a message away when working remotely, it can be simpler for employees to develop relationships with them.
Interacting with other teams and departments in a conventional office setting might be difficult or time-consuming, so many employees don't bother. Remote work encourages cross-collaboration by eliminating most team barriers that employees traditionally experience in a physical workplace. This encourages original and diverse thought and improves innovation.
Additionally, there are more advantages.?
Of course, among the many advantages, remote work also comes with some disadvantages for employers. Here are some of them.?
1. New Security Threats
Allowing remote work presents additional dangers and problems for your company. Employees are allowed to work however and from wherever they choose. Working on personal devices or utilizing public WiFi could fall within this category.
You will also need to set up a tool that enforces password policies, multi-factor authentication (MFA), remote device policies (screen lock, remote wipe), conditional access policies (limit access when specific circumstances related to network or device features are not satisfied), and more. You can regain your peace of mind about remote work, risk reduction, and compliance by establishing new policies and implementing a technology that deals with the hidden user and device security.
2. Lack of Insight Into Employee Activity
When all of your employees are in a physical office, it's easy to wander around and keep an eye on them. You will still need to track progress and deadlines even if you trust your employees. This means keeping track of users' devices, networks they access company resources from, and more. Security and device monitoring is also good idea for security purposes.
3. More Distractions
In-office and remote employees experience distractions during the workday. Some employees might work significantly better in a quiet office space they created, and some may find that children, pets, Netflix, nice weather, or other things distract them far too much. If you allow remote work, have managers check in with employees regularly to see how remote work is going.
Also, the disadvantages are
Conclusion
The advantages of working remotely typically exceed the disadvantages, especially if you're prepared to put up the effort to reduce security and productivity concerns, foster teamwork, and use wise hiring practices. Employees are more productive, more engaged, and more likely to promote your company to others when they feel happy and have autonomy at work.
All these elements are necessary for your business to succeed in the modern world since more productivity translates into higher profit margins and a more robust bottom line.