Technology has brought umpteen upgrades to our lives and the one thing that is impacting our work environment the most is the rapid acceptance of the virtual workspace. According to a recent study, 82% of the workforce expressed that they would be more loyal to their existing employers if they allowed flexibility in working hours. According to another study, a whopping 70% of the workers in the UK would prefer working with an organization that allows its employees to work remotely. This is a clear indicator that the virtual workspace is not a phenomenon that we will be experiencing in the future; it is already here.
In the light to these new findings, it would not be wrong to conclude that what employees need to work better is the control of their working hours and the option to work from their home office. This might mean that conventional workspaces might not be needed anymore. Wondering if your business can function smoothly if your team opts to work remotely? While you evaluate the options, here are the top three pros of switching to a virtual workspace:
1. Daily Commute: You and the whole team do not have to commute, hence the expenses, time, and the stress associated with it can be avoided.
2. Office Expenses: No physical location for office will make a huge cut in office-related expenses.
3. Global Talent Pool: By adopting a virtual workspace, geographic boundaries would become irrelevant and you can hire global talent.
It is the perfect time for you to consider the switch but you must learn about 3 top challenges that you may face, and advents in technology can help you overcome them:
1. Visibility: Since your employees would not be physically present, direct supervision will not be possible. This may make it difficult to track if your staff worked full-time. One of the biggest challenges of working from home is the number of distractions associated with it. To eliminate the risk of time theft, time tracking tools can be utilized. Such tools monitor the activities being performed on your employee’s computer, which is accessible to you to make sure that your employees are working their quota of hours per week. You also might want to set some expectations in this regard when hiring your team.
2. Communication: Personal meetings help a lot in delegating tasks efficiently which help employees to set clear goals. Not having your team in the same office might impact the efficiency of communication. You can have one-on-one meetings with each of the team members on different days of the week to catch up on progress of work. These meetings do not have to be only about work but can also serve as an opportunity to know more about the human on the other end of the screen. Such interactions are quite important in building relationships and improving engagement. Keeping communication going helps a lot when working with a remote team.
3. Performance: The engagement between members of your team working from remote locations also might affect the performance of collaborative tasks. To improve performance, have scheduled team meetings via video conferencing apps as frequently as daily to weekly with set agendas. This will allow all the team members to engage better and the meeting can kick-off subsequent interactions and collaborations between team members. To encourage such collaborations, digital tools like Slack can be implemented. Performance tracking tools such as Basecamp or Teamwork can be used to monitor if your employees are delivering the optimum amount of work during the time logged by them.
If you have decided to make this switch, you might want to consider prepping beforehand. Setting up a home office can be rewarding but might bring a plethora of roadblocks and challenges before you are able to take it off the ground smoothly. Learn more about the impact of the virtual workspace by checking out this interesting infographic from McGowan Transcriptions.
