Case Study: How We’ve Battled through Remote Working

The number of roles that offered remote working tripled in 2020, as companies were more often to the idea of letting employees work from home due to the pandemic which hit us. According to New Street Consulting Group, remote working roles have increased to 80,700 in 2020 which is a massive increase from 26,600 the year before. The past year has seen a massive change in the working environment for the majority of the UK and it is now becoming the new norm.  

Although there have been many studies proving that remote working can have significant benefits to many employees, we wanted to discuss the highs and lows we’ve been through at EventMind and the tools we have used, which can help other workforces out there. With half of the UK’s workforce now remote working, we think it's important to discuss how we’ve found it and give tips to other workforces which may be requiring it.

EventMind has always been a remote working business based from the CEO’s home in South London. However, from June 2020 the business began to grow and saw the introduction of a Partnership Manager, a Marketing Manager and a Business Development Manager to the company to the real introduction of remote working for multiple employees started. With many employees never having the remote working experience before, this was a new one for us to all battle together.

The challenges

Remote working has been said to have many challenges, which I’ll discuss. Although remote working has been said to give employees more flexibility, freedom and work-life balance, large businesses including Yahoo and IBM are scaling back or completely eliminating their telecommuting programmes to reduce the number working from home. While working from home is helping to stop exposing employees to Coronavirus, it does come with its own set of challenges. In a recent study Yahoo Finance carried out, workers listed the following concerns with remote working:

• Mental health (45%)
• Safety in physical workplace (37%)
• Being able to work effectively under lockdown restrictions (35%)

Mental health has been a massive cause for concern in the current pandemic, with many struggling with the switch to working from home. Dr Nick Taylor, is CEO and co-founder of Unmind, a workplace mental health platform and has recently said in an article  “that sense of connection, seeing people, seeing friends, seeing loved ones, interacting with other people. That’s been massively impacted by the isolation that we feel, or the social anxiety we feel being near to other people. If you look at our physical health, it has a direct impact on our mental health.” So this is certainly one of the major struggles that workforces have had to consider and help to improve.

Not only is mental health a cause for concern for many remote workforce employees, workplace safety is also a challenge. Where normal workplaces will have safety checks, this is not something that is carried out with home workers. Although employees have more flexibility with home working, employers must still ensure they are complying with workplace rules even for employees who don't work onsite. This is a challenge and worry for many remote workers as they may not have the adequate remote working space, like a desk and a supportive chair. Although this is a concern for some workforces, Chris Holbert, CEO of SecuraTrac has said employers can try to manage and mitigate the safety risks mobile workers face by creating effective safety reporting systems and establishing mandatory safety check-ins at predetermined intervals.

A big challenge which many employees struggled with when lockdown began was the ability to work effectively from home. With so many distractions from the door going, looking after children or pets, remote workforces had to tackle the work-life balance challenge of getting into the work mindset from a different environment. For managers, it's difficult to know if their employees are being asked of them as you’re not sitting in the same room. On the other hand, as many remote workers have set up their workspace in the living room or kitchen, employees feel like they need to over-work and do more hours just to be visible in the team. Not only this, as your laptop is accessible at your home it's so easy to log on to quickly do something in the evening, then you can get carried away and work throughout the night.

Although these are more generic challenges, we wanted to share our real life experience of the highs and lows we’ve experienced at EventMind to help other remote workforces out there feel like they’re not alone and it’s normal to experience lows and challenges of a new norm.

The Highs 

Remote working isn’t all fun and games - if you haven’t experienced remote working, you may think it's easier as you can cook dinner whilst you work or entertain your child whilst on a call - but the reality is, you try to accomplish too much whilst working.

At EventMind, we’ve got a really great communication system which I think is how we make remote working so bearable. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we have a team meeting to discuss what we have planned for the week, how the week is going and then a round up of what we’ve achieved. This has been a massive high for us, as it gives us all a focus, and a solid 30 minutes to an hour we’re away from emails and can give the team full attention. This also keeps the whole team on the same page and is a massive motivation booster hearing where the other team members are at with sales, or new ideas. Although these are the team meetings we have booked in (which we never cancel unless completely necessary), we check in throughout the day with team members. We all work very closely on tasks and projects so communication is key and we very often have to catch up throughout the day. I’ll discuss the tool we use for this shortly.

Not only do we communicate often to battle the loneliness and mental health challenges - as a team, we encourage work-life balance.  Working remotely allows for a better work-life balance anyway, this is really important to maintain a healthy work-life balance to keep us motivated. With popping to the post office, go to the food shop - our team uses lunch breaks wisely to get out of the house and away from their desk, just like they would if we were in a normal office environment. The ability to balance work and life has been proven to be the key to make workforces feel happier and more productive at work.

We’ve seen some great creativity throughout the team during remote working, too. With employees having their own space and they’re able to work in their own conditions (whether this is silently, with music on etc) this gives the freedom workers want. From a marketing perspective, I work well when I have relaxing music on - having earphones in is something which can be discouraged in some offices, so the flexibility to work in my own conditions has absolutely helped with creativity with our marketing ideas. Everyone works in different conditions and environments, but our creativity for ideas and projects have increased massively throughout the past few months and this can be put down to having a flexible remote working space. 

The Lows 

Ok, so if you know us at EventMind you know we like to be honest and truthful with our experiences. You may be here just to hear the lows we’ve experienced - so here we are.

Thinking back to a time when we were previously allowed to go into an office to work, the usual 4pm drinks and trips to the pub - the social side is something that is definitely missed when remote working. Although we have our usual Friday afternoon team meetings, of course it isn’t the same as socialising in the same room together with a drink talking about our weekend plans or deciding on what pub to go to, to kick off the weekend. Although we have great communication, the social aspect of working from home is very different. Something we previously discussed is doing virtual Friday drinks when on our team meeting, this is something we need to put into place. We’re really hard workers (maybe too hard!) so we’re concentrating a lot on what needs to be done, or what we’ve accomplished at work - the social side is definitely something we can work on at EventMind.

I’m not sure if you would class this as a low, or just something we’re really good at - we’re all work-a-holics. As a team, we often work into the evening on our own accord or check our emails over the weekend as our laptop is accessible and it’s quite hard to switch out of the working mindset in the evenings. This again is something we can improve on as a team, working during our working hours then switching off in the evenings and weekends to ensure we are getting our work-life balance.

Remote Working Resources We’ve Used

There’s been many tools we have used when remote working. The one we use on a daily basis is Google Drive. We store all of our work on this software and it's extremely helpful so the whole team can access our documents if they need to, and it saves time on emailing documents over when it’s all on the Drive. This is also really helpful so if a member of the team is off unwell, we’re able to access their documents to see what needs to be completed or what has been completed already. Alongside this, we also use Google Meets regularly for our meetings. As we use Gmail and Google Drive, it's convenient to also use this for our meetings too. Unlike Zoom, Google Drive doesn’t have a time limit which is really helpful.

We don’t just stick with Google Drive for our team meetings though, like every other remote workforce out there we also use Zoom. Zoom is again a convenient way of holding our team meetings where someone can share their screen. The video aspect of meetings makes it feel more sociable and almost replicates a normal team meeting.

As previously mentioned, we have really great communication throughout the team. We use Slack for our communication so we have different threads for different conversations: General, Marketing, so on. This is a really great software and app we use to communicate with one another, and you can have private conversations too which are helpful if you’re looking to ask someone a question or arrange a call. To save texting every single team member, it's all on one page for everyone to access and view.

Advice From our Team to Yours

We understand remote working is an odd one that we’re all trying to battle through, but in reality with studies showing that it increases productivity - I think many workforces will keep this as the new normal. I couldn’t imagine home working if communication wasn’t good, so a massive tip is to ensure you have strong communication with the team. Not only on team meetings, but to check up to make sure your team is ok to increase the social side of work too. Although some employers may feel like they’re checking up on their staff too much, it's important to remember that you’re all in a team together aiming for the final goal - so communication is such an important aspect.

If you don’t already have a social side on a Friday, why not introduce something like Friday drinks at the end of the day or a team quiz? Introducing the social aspect is a nice way to introduce the weekend and help people shut down from work. As mentioned, this is something we can also increase at EventMind.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on remote working tips or tricks you may have - we’re all in this together.

EventMind does not endorse any particular virtual event platform or software. We review the platforms available on the market monthly (through a combination of client feedback, test events and demos). If you're looking to make online events simple, or want trusted and unbiased advice, then contact the team today by emailing [email protected] or calling 0330 133 3485. We are always keen to get guest contributors on our blog, if you'd like to write a blog on our site and be fully credited, please email [email protected]