Remote work delivered by a virtual team has been an increasingly popular workplace trend over the past decade. However, given the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire global workforce is participating in a mass work from home experiment. A recent MIT survey found that more than 34 percent of workers switched to telecommuting in April due to stay-at-home orders.
In 2019, remote employment secured its position as more than just a trend but as a mainstay in American business. With 62 percent professionals working on a remote basis either full-time or at some frequency, according to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work Survey, remote work was quickly becoming the norm.
In 2020, this flexible option has abruptly become mandatory. In the economics of the Coronavirus pandemic, organizations were forced to switch in order to survive. And for this purpose, they need to keep their remote teams virtually connected, no matter how spread out they are. Not only to drive connection between employees, but also to ensure productivity.
The core concept of working from home has changed overnight. Instead of making a choice when the context was right, millions of people are now forced to work from home during a crisis that affects and even threatens their lives and the lives of those they hold dear. Our way of living turned upside down and we are forced to readjust without prior notice. As a result, even if previous studies have shown incredible benefits in favor of remote working, most of those do not apply in the current situation.
Gone are the days when companies had everybody working physically side-by-side and remote teams were scarce. The future of work is upon us, by choice or by context. And now more than ever, it has become vital for any business to streamline its communication flow and enable access to the company’s life to all their employees, regardless of where these are located.
The digital workplace is rapidly evolving. With new tools, greater demand from users, and a focus on productivity and efficiency, technology is changing the way we work for the better. As we look ahead to the trends that are shaping the modern workplace, we notice that flexible work and the availability of the right digital tools will continue to become more and more important.
Cloud-based Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) platforms have become increasingly more popular for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise spending on UCC tools grew to a $45 billion industry this past year, according to Synergy Research Group, with an average annual growth of 16 percent year-over-year.
Half of the global workforce currently holds a position that is compatible with remote work and 40 percent does work remotely at least part of the time, according to Global Workplace Analytics. While this trend has many benefits, Buffer’s State of Remote Work report found that nearly 20 percent of these remote workers felt lonely.
The remote workforce has gone global. Seventy percent of workers telecommute at least once per week, while 53 percent of employees work in the office at most half the week, according to a recent study from IWG. Even more fascinating, a Citrix study estimates that 50 percent of the workforce will be completely remote by the end of 2020. Such numbers shape the remote work trends for the next period.
No matter how hard we’re trying, we can’t be or seem to be happy all the time. We all have good moments and bad moments, good days and bad days, but sometimes life happens and depression can get ahold of even the best of us. Most professionals will try their best to keep their real feelings hidden while at the office and not let it affect their jobs. But not everyone will manage to keep that up forever. This is when swift management over difficult conversations is a necessary skill.
When you think of brand image, is your focus on external marketing plans like social media campaigns, fonts and logos? While these are crucial to your brand communication strategy, how the business communicates internally is just as important as how it’s presented externally.
