How effective is remote work?
Previously, it was assumed that remote workers were less efficient than people who put in the hours at an office. This stereotypical viewpoint was often used as a powerful justification against remote working. However, the pandemic's history has demonstrated that certain workers' morale remains the same or even increases.
This is supported by research:
According to the
International Workplace Group, 85% of business owners found that the efficiency of their operations increased due to increased flexibility, and an experiment conducted by
Stanford University showed some equally interesting figures: remote work led to an increase in productivity by 13%.
According to data from
Indeed.com, 75% of remote employees believe that working from home has helped them to create a positive balance between their work and personal time. The study also shows that remote employment reduces stress, supports morale and reduces the number of sick days. A similar trend has been confirmed by an
OWL Labs study, which compared the job satisfaction of remote workers and office workers. It turned out that 71% of remote employees are satisfied with their current place of work, while only 55% of office colleagues could say the same.
Despite popular (and now out-dated) beliefs, it is clear and obvious that many employees are able to work outside the office efficiently and enjoy themselves a lot while doing so! The newly-invigorated remote working situation has had an extremely positive impact not only on the state of the workflow and the results of a company, but also on the profitability of organizations.
So why wouldn't every company go fully remote? There are a few different reasons: the lack of services designed for remote work and unorganized activities across departments are significant factors. But perhaps the most important factor is management's fear of losing control over the process and employees.
Luckily, though, these difficulties can be easily solved by simply following the basic principles of building a successful remote working environment:
Five basics of convenient and effective remote work
Of course, the best way to understand and see the benefits of a remote working environment is seeing the results of one in practice.
Our team of technical experts at Omegalab has been operating remotely for 15 years, so we know a great deal about setting up a productive remote working environment.
Over that time, we've developed a host of tried-and-true methodologies for making remote work profitable and enjoyable. Our workers seamlessly work in 11 foreign countries every single day, effectively executing essential software tasks for large organisations.
To build an effective team framework, we use five basic principles:
1. People
Since people are at the core of our company, we take great care in hiring. When it comes to recruiting and building a remote team, evaluating personal attributes (soft skills) takes on a new significance and aligns with technical competencies (hard skills).
The most important virtues in the field of remote work are flexibility, initiative, and the capacity to self-organize, but this is just the bare minimum: as the organisation grew, we discovered that a good mindset and the ability to compensate for the loss of live contact are equally important in a safe and productive remote work environment.
2. Interaction tools
An important point to be taken from any inquiry into remote working is that your people must be able to interact and work together to succeed. The benefits of using automation in the office or home environment can not be overstated: if this applies to remote work or direct staff, ensure that you do utilise robust tools and collaboration strategies.
At Omegalab, Asana is a task management tool that we use to manage tasks. Our calls with the stakeholders are kept in a Slack feed dedicated to the project, and we also make use of YouTrack as well.
We also have regular practises and monthly briefings that keep us all singing from the same hymn sheet. These might be on the subject of things like setting the tempo of the job, getting everyone on the same page, ensuring all tasks are in line, and telling everyone what their next goals and key objectives are.
3. Assigning tasks correctly
Managers are successful by creating relationships with remote teams when distributing assignments, and such teams depend for the most part on being able to interact. For this reason, supervisors know precisely and in depth what is required of technicians, making sure they communicate each step in the technological process in a coherent way.
This job is passed to the employees, and supervisors are then allowed to monitor and control the project, but they remain within the process until it is completed. The workers are never left alone to carry out the work and they're kept advised of the progress at all times by their superiors.
4. Creating the right atmosphere
The most important thing in the OmegaLab team philosophy is to preserve a relaxed, stress-free environment when carrying out complex tasks that call for patience. We support an atmosphere that makes for casual yet productive contact in our group chats, and we gladly tolerate emojis in our work.
And of course, OmegaLab team members occasionally come together from all around the world to meet up in-person to help to develop a true friendship and human connection with each other.
5. Results are more important than the process
Since we deal with conscientious and organised individuals who take care of their workload, we do not use time trackers or other monitoring methods to closely observe our staff. Employees at OmegaLab understand that the job must be done within the agreed-upon time span and that they are responsible for the outcome, so there is no need to constantly track the workflow. At OmegaLab we have spent a lot of time studying how to pick proactive workers and create team coordination in such a way that remote processes operate like clockwork.
We deliberately wanted to create a team with a global perspective that was not anchored to one place. As a consequence, the organization now has a broader selection of experts to draw from, collaborates with specialists from all around the globe, and reacts rapidly to developments, whether it's a new crisis or a pandemic. As a result, we can categorically assert that successful remote work is possible; the key is proper organization.