Business leaders can agree that last year has marked a turning point in the work from home trend. Even before the COVID-19 shutdown, remote work had gained some considerable traction. Yet, in 2020, it became the norm for millions of employees across the globe. Providing some remote working tips and strategies for employees and leaders alike has become paramount. And this is especially true for those that didn’t have remote work in place before.
When Coronavirus cases first started to spread across the country, businesses closed their doors and sent employees home to work remotely. Almost a year later, a great percentage of these working Americans are still clocking in from their kitchen tables or home offices. And many of them are working from home parents.
The pandemic changed how teams operate on a massive scale in 2020. It has influenced the way we work and where we work. Without any doubts, working from home without the daily commute to the office has multiple implications over our lives. And not only in the summer, when it’s all green and sunny, but especially during the gloomy, cold winter season.
If you ask 10 different people to define the year that’s coming to an end tomorrow, you’ll get 10 different answers. Same if you ask 1000. Because 2020 was tough, bumpy, and full of unpredictability in all possible areas. And we can all agree that it has forever changed the way we work and interact, both in doing business and in our private lives.
When the first wave of COVID-19 forced the world into lockdown, business leaders scrambled to pivot out of necessity. Overnight, they had to make financial adjustments and staffing decisions to keep the business afloat. They had to reassure stakeholders, hone their public message, and implement health and safety measures. If being a great leader was difficult before, now it has become even tougher.
If there’s one lesson the pandemic taught business owners this year, it’s that having a virtual workforce is doable across many industries and sectors. About 50 percent of surveyed companies in the United States and Canada think their employees are more productive when working from home and project this will continue in 2021, according to Talent Trends.
However, the research also indicates that another 43 percent of companies are not sure if they can adapt to a digitally enabled remote work entirely in the months ahead.
This year threw the workforce for a major loop, as millions of people exchanged office cubicles for their own sofas and kitchen tables. And while this shift in daily scenery is one thing for existing employees, for new team members there’s a different story altogether. In a matter of months, remote onboarding has become an even hotter topic.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote working has become more and more widespread. According to Owl Labs’ State of Remote Work survey, at the beginning of this year, 62 percent of full-time employees in US worked remotely to some degree. By now, more than 65 percent are mostly working from home. And the already fragile work-life balance is once again under great pressure. Therefore, avoiding burnout and caring for the mental health of their employees have become paramount for companies from all over the world.
Six months into the new Coronavirus pandemic and we still have no clue when this crisis is going to end. Medical experts like Dr. Lisa Maragakis, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins, think that the pandemic’s first wave is gone. Most likely, we are now at the beginning of the second wave. So what does that mean for how people work together and businesses operate?
For the past half of the year, the economy has been revolving around virtual teams more than ever before. With lockdown measures in place, the only way for companies and workers all over the world to keep their jobs and their business going was switching to virtual spaces. Adjusting to this new way of working hasn’t been easy for anyone. And it has been particularly challenging for those who were doing it for the first time.
This article is coming to give a helping hand to those team leaders, managers, and workers who are trying to make their virtual teams work and prosper during these strange times.
