Having a well-balanced remote work schedule can be quite challenging. At home, you are not just fulfilling the role of a worker, you are also a family member, a housekeeper, and others, depending on individual circumstances. All of these roles come with a series of attributions that you are expected to fulfill. That is the reason why many remote workers have a hard time managing their time and sticking to a schedule.
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.
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.
More and more companies need a toolbox to help them interact in real time with partners, clients and even remote employees.
However, running remote meetings in particular comes with its own challenges. Sometimes the participants are on different time zones. Everyone needs to be updated prior to the meeting regarding the topic of the conversation. Tasks have to be shared and everyone must have a clear understanding of the entire project. Not to mention the online meeting itself has to unfold without any technical problems.
He who never dreamed of working remotely from a beach in Bali, let him cast the first stone! But is this way of work as productive as sharing the same office? There are a lot of voices out there promoting the “death of the desk job
Photo by Persnickety Prints on Unsplash
At 4PSA, we are strong proponents of remote working. We develop solutions that assist this culture and we know first hand that it works to the benefit of modern companies – where most of the workforce uses a computer to carry out its duties.
20 years ago, remote working was a luxury that few could afford. As a culture, it didn’t even exist. Firstly, there weren’t nearly as many types of businesses that could benefit from it. Then there’s the aspect of mobility – namely, the lack thereof – back then. Neither the hardware, nor the software (let alone the Internet) could sustain a telecommuting culture in the 90s, or even in early 2000s. Cloud computing was virtually inexistent, laptops were clunky, wireless Internet was scarce, tablets were still in their prototype stages, and because of this, people were forced to come into the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to do their job. Not anymore