Remote working eventually embraced
Remote working or working from home isn’t a new or revolutionary practice, it has been relied upon throughout human history. The ‘Cottage Industry’ is a prime example of this practice where large quantities of goods were produced at homes, farms and cottages without the need to travel.
Giants of industry, like Google, Yahoo, IBM, AT&T and Best Buys have all at some stage seen the benefits of this practice and adopted a variety of liberal work-from-home initiatives like ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) co-created by Jody Thompson and Cali Ressler.
This practice incentivises results (output) rather than number of hours worked, so the location of the workforce and the minute detail of their day-to-day activities is less important than the achievements.
Despite its popularity, the adoption of remote working could be more widespread. The slower uptake relates to cultural issues, people form habits and beliefs which are notoriously difficult to change. It takes something as big as the COVID19 Pandemic to force organisations and individuals to adopt new ways of working to survive, sustain and grow their competitive advantage.
Flex-working Benefits
Employees -Once operational, the benefits are evident. People spend less time commuting; technology becomes advantageous and used to its full potential. People become more autonomous, productivity inevitably rises, and employees have raised morale as they save money and get to spend more time with their families.
Organisations -Higher employee loyalty and retention are amongst the benefits enjoyed by companies supporting home working, not to mention rises in productivity, increased profits, cost savings and the opportunity to grow their workforce with unrestricted access to a wider global talent pool.
Useful tools
Video conferencing and messaging software makes flexi-working a reality and provides a smooth transiting between the office and home environments. If your organisation isn’t subscribed to a package on the mainstream services, there are plenty of free alternatives.
Microsoft teams has a free version, Zoom offers 40-min meetings accommodating multiple people, as does Google hangouts.
Train your teams
If you’re looking to adopt remote working, or you already have remote workers or remote working technology but want to improve the efficiency or the set-up then the marketors can help. Our remote management training course helps you empower and manage your teams remotely.
https://themarketors.com/course/remote-management-training/
Whilst our one-day Cisco WebEx workshop shows your teams how to use the tool effectively to conduct online meetings and training.
