The benefits of flexible or remote working are clear, and forced into many of our lives thanks to the Covid pandemic when it allowed companies and organisations to continue to function while in lockdown or under travel restrictions. But it may not all be plain sailing, as we investigate the benefits and challenges involved in this most modern way of working.
Remote working is here to stay. According to some sources, 50% of the UK workforce will working from home or out of office within the next few years.* That’s a huge statistic. But it’s not hard to see why. But if you’re thinking of introducing working from home, or putting together a new remote working policy, there’s a few important things to consider.
BENEFITS OF REMOTE WORKING
- Less commuting time.
- More autonomy.
- Greater flexibility.
- Better work–life balance.
- Higher productivity.
- Increased motivation.
- Reduced staff turnover.
- Reduced need for office space.
CHALLENGES OF REMOTE WORKING
- Can lead to longer working hours.
- Overlaps between work and personal life.
- Work intensification.
- Isolation.
- Strain on teams.
Here are 5 considerations you should make before creating a remote working policy.
1. Working environment
When you tell people you work from home, chances are one question crops up more than any other: how do you get anything done? No doubt mental images of pyjamas and background TV box sets. Obviously, creating the right environment is the way productive work ‘gets done’, so a comfortable, distraction-free space to work in is at the top of the list for would-be remote staff. After all, plenty of time and money is spent designing work-friendly offices. Lighting, spacing, temperature, swivel chairs. You wouldn’t stick your HR manager in a damp basement.
Most employees wouldn’t welcome home visits for their boss. But to get the full working from home benefits, it’s important to at least offer the training and advice to employees for creating comfortable, distraction-free workspaces; as well as to managers on how to manage and support their remote staff well.
2. No commute
Spending hours travelling to work each day is no good for anyone. Avoiding the daily commute is one of the top benefits of remote working. The health-related, financial and environmental advantages alone make working from home an attractive option.
3. Knowing when the working days begins and ends
Continual connectivity to the workplace, especially via smartphones, requires a conscious effort to ‘clock off’, rather than being able to simply leave the building at the end of the day. Lots of studies have been done around the effect of remote working on hours. Some results vary, especially across demographics, but the consensus is that those who regularly work remotely or from home do more hours per week than office-based staff. It’s not hard to see why this happens: emails or calls outside your working hours, contact on days off or annual leave, and ’20 minutes’ sending those emails on Saturday can easily turn into an hour or two. The social and family impacts this can have is worth talking about.
And while this might be good for productivity in the short term, the long-term pressures on workers are either unhealthy or unsustainable. In response, a growing number of organisations are endorsing ‘right to disconnect’ laws.
4. Sickness
Policy surrounding sickness is fairly clear for office-based staff: if you’re well enough to work, come in; if you’re too unwell to work, take the day off. But for staff working from home, the lines are blurring. In many cases, the number of sick days people take when working from home reduces. With the exertion of travelling into the office removed, it’s often possible to sit at home feeling groggy or bunged-up but still be able to work, albeit in your PJs! And without the dirty looks from neighbouring desks, fearful of catching what you’ve brought with you. This is good for sickness figures. But arguably not so good for both employers or their employees. For an organisation setting remote or working from home policy, it’s a real balancing act between looking after employees’ wellbeing, managing the quality of work produced, and being flexible enough accommodate non-incapacitating illnesses.
5. Isolation and team spirit
Isolation from your team, and from the general buzz of the office can be another challenge of regularly working from home. For many, having a quiet place to work is great for peace of mind and getting lots done. But after a while, with only your thoughts and the occasional phone call to break the silence, it’s easy to miss the stimulation of ‘stuff going on’. According to a Eurofound report, one of the biggest issues facing mobile workers is the lack of access to informal information sharing at work. i.e. general chit chat.
With today’s software, sharing important information is easy, but humanly speaking, there’s a natural reluctance to ask your workmate ‘see anything good on TV last night’ over an email! Things like regular daily meetings and team calls help to give this opportunity, a space to speak freely outside of the day’s tasks and duties. Not only can it help break the silence, but also keep you connected with your team, to build bonds and maintain a sense of spirit.
The brave new world of remote working…
With today’s technology and worker preferences, it’s clear that remote working is here to stay. To accommodate this huge shift, it’s important to understand it. To recognise the ‘new world of work’ – made of new possibilities, new standards, and new working relationships – essentially separated from time and physical space. With emphasis now on performance over working time and/or location it requires a different kind of management, centred on autonomy and self-responsibility for employees.
Remote working aligns with so many recent societal changes, made possible through advancements in technology. With these new freedoms and greater choice, we need to think hard about how our working lives are structured around our rapidly disappearing office walls in order to create a new kind of ‘workplace’ that’s good for both employers and employees of today and the future.
