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The Remote Working Experiment

By Michael Morris

Remote working experiment

This year, the world has undergone a vast remote working experiment. Although some companies had already introduced this option for their workers, COVID-19 drastically accelerated the levels of remote working out of necessity.

So has the experiment been a success? What are the pros and cons of remote working? 

The Advantages of Remote Working

Let’s start with the advantages of remote working.

For the employee, there are wide range of benefits that include:

  • Greater work-life balance. Rather than working rigid 9-5 office hours, with a potentially punishing commute further consuming the day, remote workers can work from a location of their choosing. With less time spent commuting, they can fill their day with more personally rewarding activities – whether that’s spending time with the family, going to the gym, or simply relaxing at home.
  • Saving money. Whether it’s a rail ticket or fuel for the car, commuting can also cost a lot of money.
  • Improved focus. For many workers, a noisy office is not the most conducive working environment. In one survey of UK workers, 68% felt they were more productive or equally productive at home.
remote working benefits
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There are also benefits for employers, with some of the most significant being:

  • Greater productivity and a more engaged workforce. Happy and healthy workers are also more productive workers. It’s not surprising that remote workers’ enhanced levels of wellbeing can lead them to work more effectively too.
  • Lower costs. The cost of running an office for five days a week can be substantial. Whether businesses implement remote working full-time or part-time, they will end up saving some money.
  • New talent. A remote working setup allows businesses to seek talent from further afield. 

The Disadvantages of Remote Working

Although remote working undoubtedly has many benefits, there are naturally some downsides that need to be considered too. Although video conferencing with colleagues is great for work purposes, it’s far from ideal for socialising. It’s difficult for more than one person to talk at the same time, and so group chats can descend into incoherent chaos. Face-to-face communication is important for the social culture and togetherness of a company, and remote communication is not quite able to fill the gap – yet. In future, of course, it could be that new virtual reality technology will improve matters here.

For the individual remote worker, too, this isolation can become depressing. It’s important to guard remote workers’ mental health, and ensure that they still feel involved as much as possible. Although remote working has some definite upsides for mental health, the potential downsides should not be ignored.

Has the experiment been a success?

Has remote working experiment been a success?
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Many businesses have been historically wary of introducing remote working, but the experiment during the pandemic has dispelled some of the misconceptions they might have had. Remote workers do not slack off, but continue to work productively – and some studies even suggest those who work at home are actually more productive. 

For the workers themselves, working from home can be something of a mixed blessing. Many have celebrated the improved work-life balance and wellbeing that remote working has brought them, but there are signs that remote working full-time can start to take its toll. Others have experienced increasing isolation – craving the social atmosphere of the office. 

It may be, of course, that the right balance lies in the middle ground – remote working a few days a week to improve wellbeing, but also benefiting from office socialising. In general, however, it’s clear that the remote working experiment has been largely successful: opening up new horizons of possibility for employers and employees alike. 

More great resources

Working from Home Guide

Please find below an in-depth guide on creating a healthy and productive workplace for people working from home. This is very useful since many are still under COVID-19 lockdowns. It will help you gain an understanding of the biggest challenges faced by remote workers dealing with stress, anxiety, and maintaining work-life balance at home.

Working from Home: A Guide to Creating a Healthy and Productive Workspace

Guide to Remote Working and Mental Health

This guide offers a lot of great information, such as:

  • Why remote working has become the new normal due to lockdowns – An estimated 30% of the workforce could be home-based by the end of 2021.
  • How remote working can significantly affect physical and mental health.
  • Different ways you can alleviate stress when working from home, such as creating a comfortable work environment and taking regular breaks.

How employers can help to make working from home healthier and less stressful for their employees. Click below for the full Guide.

Remote Working & Mental Health: A Young Professional’s Guide

Your home and your wellbeing: how to achieve a work-life balance while working from home

This guide offers helpful insights:

  • 65% of people value a good work-life balance as the most important factor when looking for work. 
  • As of April 2021, 31% of workers still worked remotely for the majority of the time.
  • The proportion of people working remotely varies hugely between sectors. In the Information and Communication industry, 81% of the workforce is remote. In contrast, just 8% of Accommodation and Food Service employees work remotely.
  • As of December 2020, there were 22% more people who worked from home in rural areas than in urban areas.

For more helpful information about:

  • Changing attitudes and behaviours to work-life balance
  • Tips on how to adjust and be more productive when working from home
  • Red flags that you’re not managing work-life balance well
  • How working from home affects your mortgage

How to achieve a work-life balance while working from home

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Do you need a Remote Working Policy for your Team?

Do you need a Remote Working Policy

By Jessica Santos

The best way to go about implementing a monitoring policy is to:

  • Establish a goal from the beginning and use it to guide your policy
  • Remain transparent through the process to keep your team in the loop
  • Tailor the policy to your team and acquire software that they’re comfortable with
  • Adjust accordingly after evaluating the effects of your new policy

A good remote working policy comes down to what works best for you and your team.

Remote Working Policy

Few people could have seen this coming; the importance of remote working to slow the spread of COVID-19.  Many businesses had to send their workforce away to continue business operations at home. Working from home is a safe alternative to commuting to the office, but also creates new issues some project managers may not have faced before. 

Work from home challenges

Transitioning to work from home has its own challenges since team members must practice even more self-discipline now that their colleagues are not around. It also requires employees to carve a space out at home to focus on their work.

On top of that, many may have stress and anxiety surrounding the state of our world and find it hard to push through the day.

Doctors and psychologists both recognize that our “new normal” is taking a toll on many aspects of our health and difficulty to keep up productivity, is expected. For project managers in the era of COVID-19, it’s important to strike a balance between being empathetic with our team while also keeping our projects on track.

Remote Work Policy

Working remotely

This balance gets tricky when deciding how to keep track of your team and project progress. A remote work policy can include a set of protocols to follow, protections for the business as well as increased monitoring.

Setting clear expectations and protocols might be all some teams need to keep projects on track and to keep project managers in the loop. Requiring periodic check ins and status reports might be enough to keep track of your team without keeping a closer eye on them.

However, this might not be enough if you start to see things falling through the cracks, deadlines not being met and other red flags. These red flags can signal issues with productivity or more serious matters.

Uncertainty with remote working can partly be mitigated by getting some protections for your business. If you don’t already, you should consider fidelity bonds. These bonds protect you and your clients from employees who commit things like theft and embezzlement. Although assuming the worst can put you down a rabbit hole, implementing protections provides at least some peace of mind.

Monitoring and time tracking

Remote monitoring software helps project managers keep a pulse on projects and how efficiently tasks are executed. Time tracking software is simple and can help manage project scope while more advanced software can track online activity to ensure your team members are on track.

There are many risks and benefits associated with monitoring. On the plus side, you’ll have clear, unbiased oversight of your team. Consequently, some team members may feel stressed and may interpret the increased monitoring as a lack of trust. You can consider a hybrid of self-reporting and software monitoring to streamline some tasks while giving your team some control.

Decide if monitoring is necessary

JW Surety Bonds put together this flowchart to help you decide if you should begin monitoring your remote team. This decision map walks you through key questions and scenarios to think of before diving headfirst into a monitoring policy. Take a look at the flowchart below and see if monitoring is the right move at this time for your team.

Please include attribution to JW Surety Bonds with this graphic.

remote employee monitoring flowchart

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