IS WORKING REMOTELY THE WAY FORWARD?

WHAT IS REMOTE WORKING?

You may have heard lots of people casually mention a thing or two about remote work, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Working remotely hasn’t been an extremely new trend however, it presented itself as one of the safest means to help both employers and employees keep to work in recent times and particularly during lockdowns.

Clearly, the emergence of COVID-19 forced lots of firms and companies around the globe into quickly adopting and adjusting to working remotely.

This new normal for working is described as work done outside the conventional office setting or a physical office environment. It is work rather done from home, a coffee shop, or any place that goes beyond the confines of one’s office.

Noting that the availability of collaborative tools such as Slack, Zoom, Google Meets, Teams, and many others all aid in making working remotely possible.

HOW HAVE EMPLOYEES EMBRACED WORKING REMOTELY?

As stated earlier, a large number of companies during the widespread of COVID-19, quickly adapted to working remotely. This adjustment later resulted in an alarming increase in layoffs which led to lots of employees losing their jobs. Tech companies such as Andela, Uber Technologies, and the likes were no exception. On the flip side, while employers or managers believed their decisions were to help curb the worst situations the companies may face during the pandemic, workers also believed otherwise expressing their disagreements to decisions meted out to them.

Nonetheless, from research, it’s noted that both managers or employees have their own sentiments regarding remote work. According to an article by WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, they point out research done by IBM Institute for Business Value, which brings to light how most workers feel.

In the research, it is stated that workers feel disconnected, tired, and overloaded whereas their managers think and are confident their teams are getting the needed support and training.

The common saying by most of these managers has been we are helping members of our team or staff learn and adapt to new ways of working. Information gathered, however, reveals that working remotely has had both pros and cons associated with it.

Unicorn Developers, being a typical example of a startup that has fully adopted remote working as its primary means for rolling out portions of work and executing its tasks for each day; is an organization that started off remotely with just an eight-member core team handling the day to day affairs of the organization.

Gradually, we executed our assignments and tasks for each given period using online collaborative tools. Over time we have chalked success in areas such as organizing online coding classes for interested applicants for three consecutive times, building our website. We have also been able to build a very viable online working setting and presence that enables us to effectively deliberate and discuss projects and tasks each body in the organization has to work on.

Coupled with this, is another project we embarked on and still running is the Unicorn Explore Project. This happens to be a tech-based project that seeks to educate the general public on new trends and concepts in the tech space. Thus, giving room for all our clients, audiences, and followers the opportunity to learn, process, and understand how things work in the World of Technology!

It is worth noting that all these and even more have been achieved by the team mainly through working remotely.

This notwithstanding, we have equally been faced with both the positive and the daunting experiences of working remotely as a startup.

In this article, we share some of the advantages and disadvantages of working remotely and then find out for ourselves if working remotely in these times is indeed the way forward. Especially due to the times we find ourselves in.

ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES OF WORKING REMOTELY FOR BOTH EMPLOYEES AND MANAGERS.

By observation, we noticed that the struggles that emerged when organizations had to quickly shift from the normal physical office setting to remote work from their homes, was as a result of lack or very little preparedness by most employees and managers regarding adapting to working and successfully executing projects and tasks using virtual tools.

In view of this, it is worth pointing out that even medium-sized organizations found it quite intimidating to maintain and narrow down their day-to-day processes to the remote working system.

Working remotely offers many benefits to individuals of the organizations some of which are

Advantages associated with working remotely from home.

• It enables an excellent balance of one’s work and life. That is, it gives room for individuals to work at their own pace and scheduled timing.
• Another is, it allows room for more savings, particularly for employees. According to Global Workplace Analytics, working at home half of the time results in saving $2500-$4000 per year and also points out that adapting to work from home has telling effects of saving more than 1600 lives, which aids in preventing almost 99,000 injuries. This goes a long way to save about 12 billion dollars a year for both direct and indirect costs associated with traffic accidents.
• Additionally, one gains the opportunity to spend more time with their loved ones or even have some quiet time with themselves.

Challenges associated with working remotely from home.

• First on the list is the struggle with sticking to a specific routine while working outside the confines of the office.
• The second is waiting for a response from a fellow team member. This is when you may be in urgent need of an answer or a response from a fellow team member but then you end up either having no response or a delayed one, resulting in a slow pace of having tasks being executed. When this repeats itself, gradually commitments from employees of the organizations begin to dwindle.
• Boredom is also an undeniable challenge that associates itself with working outside the typical office work setting.
• Unplanned interferences: This occurs a lot especially when things like performing chores or running errands present themselves as a dying need that ought to be met immediately. This ends up distorting the day's planned working activity thus, reducing productivity.

Previously, working remotely wasn’t a quick go-to option for most organizations or businesses. However, due to the rapid changes we have observed over time, we notice that this means of executing and performing assigned tasks have at most presented itself as an excellent means.

Many have fast started adapting to it. Some expressed their excitement in trying this new normal while others have expressed the opposite. Having listed out a few of the benefits and challenges associated with remote work, our question still remains…….IS WORKING REMOTELY INDEED THE WAY FORWARD?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below. Thank You!

Written By Emmanuella Shika Tetteh.