How American businesses fail to benefit from growing remote worker demo

January 15, 2019 33

With more US workers embracing the options of remote work, it is impossible for businesses to ignore the trend. According to studies, approximately 70% of the global workforce work remote at least once a week.

In other words, 1 in 7 employees in the world doesn’t work from the office all the time. In the U.S., the trend is to reach 5 million in 2019. By 2020, half of the working population in North America will have a remote desk.

Despite the popularity of the out-of-office workstation, there are rising concerns about the business benefits from remote working options. Indeed, too many companies fail to maximize the trend to their advantage.

Communication issues are an obstacle

Communication in the office deserves its dedicated field of study. Indeed, from dealing with difficult colleagues to managing internal politics, communication and especially poor communication processes can affect the productivity and work quality of your team.

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Failure to share information is not a novelty. But for remote workers, a disorganized office can lead to issues with clarity, lack of collaboration, and isolation.

Most remote workers feel isolated from day-to-day projects and decisions. The poor communication process slows down their productivity and creativity.

With a plethora of collaborative tools and methods, companies have no excuse to leave their remote workers in the dark.

Failure to understand the run cost of IT

Remote workers, by definition, don’t sit in the typical office constellation. However, to deliver their work, they need access to the same network and data than their office-based colleagues.

At a company level, this means considering outsourcing IT services to provide shared services, secured technologies and digital organization to the entire team. For many business owners, failure to design adequate IT sourcing strategies can lead to poor decisions; from saving money in the wrong places to disrupting established processes.

The aim of evaluating your IT requirements in alignment with remote workers is to guarantee high speed at the lower costs for the entire company, and not only to the office-based employees.

Out of sight, out of mind

Remote workers tend to feel lonely because the company doesn’t manage to acknowledge the contribution of employees who are only digitally present. By running desk-count organization instead of total input, many companies make the mistake of dividing their employees into two groups: the ones you can see in the headquarters and the ones you can’t see.

The introduction of collaborative video or phone stand-ups can ensure that nobody gets forgotten. Indeed, employees who don’t feel adequately appreciated are more likely to quit within the year.

Mistaking remote working option for a perk

Companies often present remote working options as the ultimate job perk. In truth, remote work is not a perk anymore. It’s a professional situation that many employees crave for.

Keeping your employees satisfied requires benefits they wouldn’t get anywhere else. Health and wellness is becoming a top priority of business and industry trend for 2019 for both remote and office-based staff.

From health insurance packages to dedicated health allowances, companies need to look after the physical and mental well-being of their teams.

Keeping your company appealing to remote workers is a modern-day challenge. However, the cost of turnover rates can’t be ignored.

Successful remote working strategies rely on understanding and meeting the needs of your team.