Impact of Remote Working in Companies

Impact of Remote Working in Companies

COVID-19 brought changes to the workplaces in many organizations around the world. Many regulations that came up to curb the spread of the pandemic caused changes in the operations of the organizations. The organizations had to adhere to regulations that restricted public gatherings, and movements and demanded social distancing. With such, many organizations had to close their doors but still needed continuation of work. The demand led to increased remote work. Remote working is important because employees can continue to work at home, innovations increase, and increased workplace diversity.

To adhere to the COVID-19 control regulations, many employees started working from home. COVID-19 disrupted the physical work environment leading to the need for remote working that pushed companies to develop a virtual workplace for employees despite their locations. Virtual workplaces came up as a way for companies to continue serving their purpose by having employees collaborate and work together from their homes. Some companies were not familiar with remote working hence needed adjustments and upgrading of company technological infrastructure to accommodate everyone by overcoming the physical inconvenience. This led to inventions in both technical and human resource departments to meet the needs of both employees and the company as a whole (Limoncelli, 2020).

Benefits of Remote Working

Remote work led to the need for innovations that would create efficient and effective virtual workplaces for employees to complete their responsibility. Various tools and platforms were developed by companies with the idea of improving their technological infrastructure to accommodate teleworking. Most teleworking employees are relying on these online tools and platforms to connect and collaborate. Tools like zoom, WebEx, and Google chat platforms on the company websites were developed to enhance video conferencing, chatting, and teamwork in the virtual workspace. Online human resource management tools have made it easier to monitor, keep track and manage employees in virtual workplaces. This eased remote working by making employees keep in touch and efficiently work. Despite working from home, managers could still manage their teams and employees could still access the organization's platforms for work (Parker et al., 2020).

Remote working enhances working from anywhere they can whether in homes, remote offices, or a different space away from the office. Currently, most international organizations are using remote work to bridge the geographical gap in their workforce. Organizations operating in different geographical locations are using remote work to collaborate and coordinate work among their employees. People could work in any organization across the globe without being limited by distance. Also, organizations can easily control their affiliates in foreign lands from the headquarters. With improved technology, organizations can have their human capital work together through the virtual workplace. Remote working may be a challenge, but companies can overcome the challenges that arise with remote work (Olmstead, 2019).

Remote working is important to companies as employees can continue to work at home, innovations increase, and increased workplace diversity. It helps overcome the geographical challenges and physical meetings of employees and teams. Working from home could push companies to make innovations in their technological infrastructure and allows sourcing human capital from any part of the world. Although the pandemic created the need for remote work end, companies could still develop and embrace remote work to improve their organizational work culture in the future.

References

Limoncelli, T. A. (2020). Five Nonobvious Remote Work Techniques. Communications of the ACM, 63(11), 108–110. https://doi-org.libauth.purdueglobal.edu/10.1145/3410627

Olmstead, L. (2019, April 9). The 7 Challenges of Managing a Remote Team (and how to overcome them). TalentLMS Blog. https://www.talentlms.com/blog/challenges-managing-remote-team-how-overcome-them/

Parker, K., Horowitz, J., & Minkin, R. (2020, December 9). How Coronavirus Has Changed the Way Americans Work. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/