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.
The frequency of remote work options have grown exponentially in the past decade, with an estimated 3.6 million Americans working from home in at least some capacity, based on State of the Remote Job Marketplace.
The remote work trend has notable perks for both employees and employers – no commute, time flexibility and minimal office costs. What’s more, a study of 500 employees from Stanford University reports that working from home can lead to a boost in productivity. For example, traditional office workers in the study lost time due to traffic on their commutes, periodic water-cooler breaks and other daily interruptions, while remote employees did not.
Working remotely is on the rise. More and more people want to work from a location of their choice. At home, wearing pajamas, on a flexible schedule. On a beach, next to a pinna colada.
Internet innovation drives remote work. Bundles of tech solutions. Long commutes in regular jobs incentivize it even further. Besides, research shows remote workers are more productive. They do more with less, which leads to work intensification.
To be fair, the reverse is nearly as likely. People that do remote work have to be productive to make the cut. The vast majority of people, however, have issues with getting motivated. Everything is so distracting. There are far too many sources for interruptions. From getting the wrong order in a coffee shop to a noisy scanner in a co-working space. While at work, you at least have a productivity benchmark. And teams to boost your morale. At home, you might get stuck in between the fridge and the couch while binging on Netflix.
Coworking is a concept that’s “younger” than the average millennial professional life. Yet it also seems to be hugely popular, trendy even. Projected coworking spaces follow a curve that resembles Moore’s law. Every year, there are twice as many spots to fill. Either extensions or new spaces being open in a novel approach to build “uncorporations”. However, the concept of coworking is as old as early human communities.
After all, coworking is people doing similar work in shared spaces. Unlikely collaborators pursuing mutually advantageous strategies for development. Sharing a workspace with friends, mentors, and the competition. In a sense, this is remote work with superpowers. And it is more than a trend.
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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
In a paper on the state of telecommuting, Telework Research Network acknowledges that the U.S. workforce is increasingly mobile, “but, beyond that broad statement, we know little about the rate of increase in mobility — how often people are out of the office, where they are, and what they’re doing. For that matter, there’s no agreed-upon method of defining who they are.”
Or isn’t there? Ctrip, China’s largest travel agency, joined forces with Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, in order to find out how telecommuting impacts the worker, the boss, and the business. 250 of Ctrip’s employees volunteered as lab rats in the experiment, with half being deployed at home and half in the office. They found that the benefits were short term.
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Fun fact: unscheduled employee absences cost the U.S. a whopping $300 billion per year, in what is mostly no mood for work. Studies have showed that 78% of employees who call in sick, really aren’t. According to Global Workplace Analytics, they actually do so because of personal needs.
Everyone wakes up on the wrong side of the bed from time to time. Because we understand that and because we value employee satisfaction, here at 4PSA we have a No Mood for Work policy.
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Quick: what are your staffers doing at this very second? If you’re like most organizations, there’s a good chance many of your staffers are attending to personal matters. But who says it’s acceptable just because it happens in other offices too?
According to a recent survey of 2,000 office workers conducted by AtTask and Harris Interactive – experts in management and market research – employees at various firms said they only dedicate 45 percent of their time to getting stuff done. The remainder (55%) of the time gets spent sifting through emails, or in meetings that could easily be replaced by conference calls. Also on the list of common pastime activities was “miscellaneous interruptions.”
There is no question that Unified Communications solutions are good for business. But it’s often understated that UC solutions can have a great impact on the environment too. UC tools are all about connecting people and making their lives as easy as possible through smart deployment of technology.
Consider the following two aspects and you’ll see where I’m going with this.
With the power of UC solutions to unite business partners around the globe at a moment’s notice, in many cases in-person meetings are no longer the necessity they once were. Rather than having international business partners travel to a specific location to negotiate, consuming a lot of resources and time in the process, partners can now call from anywhere they are, with the same personalized, seamless interactions they would have in real life. Add to that the recording capabilities of the best UC software, and you will get an even more powerful means of following up on meetings.