Of all the business topics that are most popular in modern times, remote working is one that captures the interest of employers and employees alike. It’s a difficult topic to start discussing because there are many positives and negatives of going remote, many of which depend on the situational factors of your business, meaning that many people naturally feel differently about it.
Still, it might be that you’ve weighed all these up and come to the conclusion that it is, in fact, right for you. In this case, how do you start? Is your business ready to just immediately make the switch and abandon the office culture?
Supporting the Remote Environment
This depends. While the idea of reducing your need for an office can be appealing due to the money that such a shift could save you, it might also be one that you could make with too much haste. If you don’t have the proper infrastructure in place, you might find yourself in a situation where you naturally wind up remote working without the proper preparation and decide to blame the shortcomings on the structure instead of the specifics of your situation. If you and your team are going to work remotely, they’re going to need the right tools, equipment, and mentality.
For some businesses, this is going to mean that they have to provide their staff with work equipment like proper desks and laptops, as well as secure access to everything their work requires in the first place. In areas like development, this might mean that additional security needs to be considered due to the decentralized nature of the structure, relying then on the security of several networks as opposed to one. This doesn’t have to be a deal-breaker, but it might mean that you become more interested in specific approaches like implementing API security solutions to prevent unauthorized access and other risks.
Willing Employees
There might be something of a perception among employers that businesses themselves are opposed to remote working conditions and employees are always in favor of it. This isn’t true, of course, and everyone is going to have their own opinion. For example, you might find that some employees enjoy the social aspect that comes with the typical office space and announcing that you’re making the shift to a fully remote structure might remove a lot of what people like about working with you.
Equally, there are going to be some who will relish this opportunity, and it might be something that works as a benefit to new, prospective employees. It’s important to run your eyes over some trends and statistics in this area, as it can help you to develop a more thorough understanding of what the remote work landscape is like and how people might respond to this proposed shift.
It could be something that you gradually shift toward through hybrid conditions. You might introduce a period of time where people can only come into the office on certain days, or maybe they can be free to choose when they work at the office and when they work from home. This period can familiarize both you and your staff with the new way of working and make you aware of the pros and cons in a more valuable way than looking at a list might do.
A Different Mindset
It’s unrealistic to expect your remote working structure to be identical to what you’re used to in the office. They’re fundamentally different, and the differences are what lead to their differing strengths. What employees often appreciate about remote working is a sense of independence in their work, and the ability to structure their life how they’d like to. Therefore, if you go into remote working with the expectation that you’re going to be able to completely monitor what they do, you might find that you end up alienating people.
You have to be adaptable to the changes that come your way. That might mean that you need to trust your employees more and be more comfortable with delegating responsibilities. It’s not just about putting it in their hands, though, this is also a shift that can have advantages for you, especially when it comes to freeing up your own time and leaving you with a more competent, confident, and experienced staff.
If you feel as though this isn’t something that’s going to work for you or your working style, it might mean that this route isn’t for you, or it might be worth looking at the balanced, hybrid approach again.
Communication and Coordination
Part of the shift to remote working is difficult for some due to the differences in how you communicate with your team. For example, when it comes to the office, you might find it easy to host a meeting and get everyone in the same room, which is useful for conveying information, but it can lead to a reliance on meetings that didn’t need to happen, ultimately potentially wasting more time rather leading to any increase in productivity.
When you go remote, it’s tempting to apply this same philosophy to virtual meetings due to how platforms like Zoom are used by remote workers. These platforms are invaluable for communicating and coordinating across distances, but they can still pose the same problems, and this might run contrary to the more independent nature of remote work that was mentioned previously.
Instead, you could look to tools that place a greater emphasis on collaboration and coordination, such as cloud document technology. Examples like Google Docs and OneDrive are often free to access (though increased storage capacity comes with costs), and this can allow multiple people to work on the same document easily and efficiently, removing the need for it to be emailed back and forth. There might even be times in your current structure where these are used, which can make adapting them to a slightly different environment even easier. Understanding how to be efficient and concise with your communications can place more of an emphasis on the quality of work over check-ins that might not always be necessary.
