The COVID-19 pandemic has hit us badly! A large number of organizations are letting their employees work from home in order to maintain social distance. Before this pandemic, there were some companies that have remote work benefits. But now it has become the primary way of keeping productivity up to level for some industries. But the sad part is that some companies are also facing some challenges of working from home.
You know that this is an overnight shift. I mean overnight companies needed to decide to run their operations remotely. There was very little time in hand to arrange everything yet they are doing great.
But some employers are facing the biggest challenge for businesses going online completely. There is no better alternative to work from home in covid situation. And that’s why today we are in search of the best remedies to the challenges of working from home. If you too are an employer or an employee, this blog is going to help you out. This blog is going to address the mutual sufferings of all who (employee and employer) are working remotely in this pandemic situation.
So, let’s focus on the challenges of working from home that we are facing since 2020.
A list of challenges of working from home of both employee and employers
- Social isolation
During the office-going days, employees used to meet with other employees and spend a great time together. But when they are working from home, this opportunity is considered at a great level. We have seen that employers often do not prefer socializing by employees at the working places. But it is effective for the mental health and better productivity of the employees. Employees are missing the face-to-face communication and bonding they used to have with their co-workers.
Solution- If you and your employees are facing the same situation, you should equip your entire workforce with the best communication technology. You can develop your own communication tool with the necessary features. Or you can use the market available popular tools such as Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, and so on. There are a lot of software or communication tools that are offering free services. So, if you are running a small business and investing money in communication practices is not possible for you, you can easily take the help of those communication tools and maintain a smooth communication chain between all your employees.
- Reduced productivity level
Research says that employees that are working from home are more productive than their productivity levels at the office. But this rule cannot be the same for each employee of each organization. Time theft, buddy punching, and so many other things can take place when an employer lets all his/her employees work from home. For all these things, the productivity level will suffer. Apart from this, many employees do not agree to maintain the official working schedules when they are working from home. All these things together seem a big challenge to the employer.
Solution- the employer should fix a production target and communicate with all employees on a regular basis. If the employee base is too large, communicating with each employee will be a hard thing. In such a situation, the employer can enable an employee productivity tracking tool. From employee attendance details to the total working hours of each employee- a performance tracking tool will help you in managing everything. Apart from this, you can provide a spreadsheet to each of the employees where they will write down their performance details of each working hour. In this way, you will be able to prevent time theft and keep the overall productivity level up.
- Physical discomfort
Nearly all organizations enable the best chair, desks, and other equipment so that all employees can perform their tasks with great ease and comfort. Employees spend a really long time on chairs in order to perform their tasks. Most of the employees do not have the office-like chair-desk setup at their homes. But somehow they are managing to work with the arrangements they have. And it is causing physical discomfort to them. Physical discomforts, in the long run, can invite a lot of diseases.
Solution- HRs of your organization should conduct video meetings in order to educate all employees about issues related to physical discomfort, good postures, best sitting positions, and so on. They should educate employees about everything- light, chairs, computer screen position, work breaks, and so on. They have to make all employees understand about their health care and having good health as it is really important when the entire world is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Poor collaboration and teamwork
Each team member is far from another team member when they are working from home. The physical separation of employees and the dependency on a remote team can invite many collaboration issues. Employees hesitate to knock other employees whenever required but when they work face to face they can easily solve these issues without having any hesitation in their mind. Calling a teammate lots of time in a day or texting in chat groups may seem a bit awkward for employees and they try to solve things on their own. This kind of practice sometimes brings lots of errors in the production and practices.
Solution- in order to smoothen the remote collaboration, there is a lot of secure as well as free communication tools are available in the market. You can take the help of those tools and keep each employee engaged. Apart from this, you should make your employees understand the benefit of proper communication especially when they are working from their home. Lack of proper communication will turn into one of the Challenges of Working from home and soon a company has to withdraw the remote work regime and that is not appreciated especially when the world is struggling with the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- No software of SaaS support for employees
When all your employees at the office, it is easy to track their performance, attendance, and so on. You can have direct communication with them and motivate them all time in order to boost the production level. But when they are out of your sight, it becomes hard to keep an eye always on their performance level and you cannot ping them frequently to check their performance. It will interrupt their working procedures. Many organizations try to handle this kind of situation by manual efforts and they end up messing more the entire situation. You should not commit the same mistake.
Solution- Without causing any interruption to any of your employees, you can get detailed performance tracking data of each employee if you equip your organizational practices with one hr management SaaS solution. From attendance timings to duty hours of each employee, you will be able to track everything. Today’s leading hr management software solutions help in solving the biggest Challenges of Working from home. From communication to performance, it will help you in managing every aspect of human resource management of any organization. In 2021, it will be a bad decision if you are running an organization remotely even without the support of any human resource management software solution.
- Security issues
When your employees will work from their homes, there is no alternative to let them use your system remotely from their devices. And it can make your system prone to security threats such as malware, ransomware, viruses, phishing, and so on. Your important organizational data can be lost, misused, or even stolen. You may have noticed that hr management software databases have become a sweet target of cyber attackers as here they get lots of information about people. From bank details to other personal details, such an attack can reveal all confidential data to people with bad intentions.
Solution- In order to prevent such issues or risks, there is only one solution and that is equipping your business organization and employees with the best hr management software solutions. It is the only way to prevent such Challenges of Working from home and let employees work their own way without having any worry.
Apart from this, you should ask all your employees to have up-to-date virus software installed on their devices. You can make them use remote-access VPN in order to encrypt the connection between employees’ devices and the network of the company. Cloud storage benefits with password protection, regular and virtual cybersecurity awareness programs, etc should be conducted on a regular basis in order to eliminate any single chance of data theft or misuse.
- More time in front of computer screens
It is one of the Challenges of Working from home for today’s employees that they are unnecessarily sitting in front of the computer screen for a longer span of time. When they used to come to the office, they used to maintain a personal routine for work. But now it seems that they are spending more time in front of the screen and messing with their health and family life. Enforcing lunch and break timings is difficult as no employer or HR can track these things when employees are working from their home.
Solution- Organizations should convey the benefits of scheduled lunch hours and break timings so that employees maintain a healthy lifestyle. During the work from home time, employees remain more productive but that does not mean they will sit in front of the computer screens more than required. The HRs should constantly deliver the health notes and motivational things so that employees remain active, engaged, and physically fit.
- Poor work-life balance
Maintaining the perfect work-life balance has become one of the biggest Challenges of Working from home for both employees and employers. Over-working, too much time in front of the computer screen, and so on can affect the personal life and employees may face poor mental peace. In order to keep employees truly productive, healthy, and smart, employers should help employees to maintain a good work-life balance.
Solution- You should monitor the performance hours of each employee. How much time they are spending for you that should be measured properly. Too many hours or too few hours- nothing is appreciated. If you have overtime benefits, you should check that your employees are not messing with their health and personal life in order to earn some added money. You should encourage your employees to complete the work within the mentioned office hours. In this way, you will get your work done on time and your employees will get time to have some free time that they can spend with their family and on personal care.
- Poor understanding of work
While running your organization remotely, you need to hire people and onboard them perfectly. But many organizations find it difficult when it comes to making new employees understand the work properly. A direct and face-to-face discussion that employees used to have in offices that is not possible since 2020. And it is causing a poor understanding of work.
Solution- here, you should enable constant communication. Via video call, audio call, and chat- you should introduce the new employees to all the teammates and make them easy to have proper communication from the next time. You should encourage all employees to communicate whenever they face any confusion related to work. You should ask your managers and team leaders to take added care while making other employees understand the work.
Conclusion
All these 9 Challenges of Working from home can be easily solved if an organization equips its employees with advanced cloud-based hr management software such as HRMWARE. Employee performance tracking to remotely onboarding new employees- everything will be truly effortless and any kind of confusion-free. HRMWARE is now available for free for the organizations that are running with up to 10 employees. No matter if you are a giant business owner or a small business owner, this amazing software solution can help you in all areas of remote organization management during the COVID-19 pandemic.