Since 2020, the entire world is facing a historic shift due to the outbreak of coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic has just changed the way we humans used to live. From our communication manners to work procedures- everything is changed now. We all are exploring new ways in order to survive as well as grow in this world where a deadly virus is constantly threatening us. Now wearing a mask is a mandatory thing. In the same way, working also seems mandatory. Now nearly all organizations have enabled the remote work regime. But most employees and other people have a query and that is ‘is working from home the future?’.
Employees are indeed more productive when they are doing work from home. They do not need to face transportation stress, they can spend more family time, they can be more flexible with work shifts, and so on. But they are staying far from their co-workers and getting fewer chances to socialize. Employers and HR professionals are redesigning all organizational policies in order to boost remote communication and keep employees engaged via virtual effort.
Some governments have already allowed organizations to work with 50% of employees at the office premises and the rest of the employees will be performing from home. And that’s why many people have a question when the pandemic will be over, then employees will be back to the office premises or they will still be performing from home. Research says by 2025, at least 70% of the entire workforce will be performing from home at least five days a month. We have already seen 2020, the year of remote work. According to the experts, 2020 is just the beginning and in 2021 the trend is continuing due to the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many research and surveys indicate that a major group of company owners and employees are planning to continue remote work even when the pandemic will be over. They are simply finding this thing truly a better alternative that ensures increased productivity. They are investing more in remote technologies in order to keep employees engaged and motivated. But there must be more reasons that are inspiring owners to make such a decision. Do you know those reasons? If NO, let’s know the reasons together.
Reasons why remote work regime is the future
- Long and dress-full commute elimination- according to a study conducted in 2016 by Auto Insurance Center (AIC), an average commuter needs to spend nearly 42 hours a week and lots of money in traffic snarls. Such a long commuting time over stress employees and they become less productive. After spending this much time just commuting, they get less time for work and family. And such a scenario makes their life more complicated.
You may have seen that after commuting for a long time, they become tired and just after entering into the office, they cannot start the work, they need some time in order to relax and concentrate on the work.
Some companies offer pick-up and drop facilities to all their employees. For that, they need to spend a lot of money. They need to arrange vehicles, fuel, drivers, and so on. Still, employees commute for a long time and get stressed.
In order to save all these expenses and to keep employees stress-free and highly productive, a lot of company owners are planning to continue the remote work regime even when the pandemic will be over. It seems that remote work is going to be mainstream and the ‘office-going regime will be an alternative.
- Employee productivity- many companies have agreed during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic is that they are getting more production from their remote employees. Due to the pandemic, many companies were clueless about how they will maintain the productivity level if they need to let employees work from home. Many countries imposed lockdowns and as a result, companies had no other option than to let their employees perform from home. But soon they realized that they are getting increased productivity level when their entire workforce is working remotely.
Employees who are working from their homes have less stress as they do not need to communicate for long hours, they do not worry about exposure to the virus, they find the home atmosphere more comfortable, and so on. For all these reasons, they can perform more and better. They can concentrate more and deliver quality work. When an organization gets quality work from all its employees on a regular basis, the company becomes stronger and grows at a better speed.
When the remote work regime lets organizations get more productivity, why companies will switch to the old office-going regime! There are some companies that have decided to keep most employees at their homes and let them perform from home and just a few employees will come to the office. It will be done rotationally so that all employees visit the office at least once a week/month.
- Staff attrition reduction- Companies that have enabled the remote work practice are enjoying an increased employee retention rate. It is just like offering employees better satisfaction. When employees get the work from home, they do not think about the distance, commute, work hours, hikes, and so on. Even during the coronavirus crisis, if a company offers fewer monetary perks, employees choose to stay there just because they can work from home.
Companies suffer a lot when employees leave the organization frequently. In order to recruit and train employees, a company needs to spend a lot of money. But all goes in vain if the company fails to retain employees for a longer span of time. It also affects their productivity level and performance quality.
If employees are resigning frequently, it will be hard to turn the employee base into a talent pool. When an employee leaves, the HR professionals need to start from the very beginning i.e. preparing job advertisement and publishing. Frequent resignation by employees also affects the reputation of the company and it becomes tough to attract talented candidates in the near future.
But if you let your employees work from home, you will automatically enjoy a reduced staff attrition rate. Since 2020, employees prefer to work in an organization that offers remote work opportunities. In this way, they will be safe from the virus, relaxed, and more satisfied. They will not make quick job switching decisions if their present organization is offering all the best remote work benefits.
- Employees from any corner of the world- Previously organizations used to hire employees who live nearby (state and country). You know that not all employees have the right arrangements or capacity to hire talents from the international market as they will not be able to provide all perks. On the other hand, distance plays a great factor. Employees do not prefer a distant place for the sake of the work. And that’s why they also search companies that are in their states or at least in the country.
For these reasons, having diversity in the talent pool was a dream for many organizations. But the remote work regime has turned this dream into a reality. Now an organization can hire employees from any part of the world and create a better talent pool. As an owner, you will get talented and skilled employees to take your organization to the next level.
Apart from this, you will be able to hire people from countries with lower currency value. You can pay them salaries according to their country rates and it will save a lot of money that you can use on technologies to improve your remote work infrastructure.
- Lots of money-saving- with the help of the remote work regime, a company will be able to save a lot of money. First of all, it does not need to provide any commute facility to its employees. Secondly, there is no need to maintain an office set up. Thirdly, there is no electricity bill, water bill, food bill, maintenance bill, and so on. You can save all these expenses easily by letting your employees perform from home.
It is an obvious fact that when your entire workforce will work from home, you have to invest more in remote technologies so that you can keep everything perfect. Many companies are investing in various types of technologies so that they can best support their employees. Communication tools, HR management tools, employee management tools, employee tracking tools, attendance management tools, and so many other technological tools are there that a company will require in order to successfully run a remote workforce and grow constantly.
- Increased employee engagement- we have seen that more and more companies are spending lots of money over buying next-gen technologies that will perfectly support their remote work environment. No matter employees are performing from home or coming to the office, they should be truly engaged with the organization. It is also true that in order to keep employees properly engaged, now companies are taking new ways. They are deploying various types of technologies, redesigning communication and engagement strategies.
After enabling all types of efforts, companies are realizing that they are getting more employee engagement than they used to get during the in-office time. Apart from this, they are also realizing that employees have become much more responsible and trying to ensure growth especially when the pandemic is trying to ruin everything. Increased employee engagement comes with a lot of other benefits such as increased productivity, increased employee retention rate, the popularity of the organization, better work environment and culture, and so on.
Is remote work permanent?
According to a survey by Enterprise Technology Research, by the end of 2021, the percentage of employees working from home is going to be double. The survey is also saying that all productivity metrics are saying that remote work is actually working when it comes to increasing the productivity of all employees. The increase in productivity indicated that the remote work tendency will be increased but it will be nearly double was completely unexpected, said Erik Bradley, the Chief engagement strategist at ETR.
It is not that only employees wanted to work from home. But also companies want to turn their in-office workforce into the remote workforce. According to the Gartner CFO survey, nearly two-thirds of all companies prefer to shift employees to permanent remote work when the pandemic will be over. For example, we can say that a big company like Twitter has asked its employees in May 2020 that they can work from home indefinitely. When big giants of the industries are taking such measures, it is obvious that small and medium-sized businesses are also going to follow them soon and later.
There are some companies who have realized the exciting benefits of remote working much before the Covid-19 pandemic. They have been doing great since then. In order to support the remote work practices, many industries are doing more investment in the technological aspects. The remote work practice can create a distance or lack of communication. In order to conceal all these things, more and more companies are investing money in various advanced technologies such as SaaS products, communications tools, and so on. In this way, they will be able to enable a smooth and confusion-free communication process to have a superior remote work environment.
Conclusion
If you too are planning to permanently shift your in-office workforce into a remote workforce, it is the best time to do that. It is not that you have to invest heavily in technologies. There are a lot of technologies that can satisfy your multiple requirements single-handedly. Recruitment, onboarding, training, employee tracking, attendance management, employee management, performance management, payroll management, leave management, announcement, cloud data storage, data-driven reports, and so many other benefits you can easily get from a single SaaS product named HRMWARE. It is a complete human resource management software technology with a free subscription for organizations running with up to 10 employees.