We wouldn’t have dared to imagine a world so drastically different from the one we were living in a year ago. But this year, COVID-19 changed everything about our world as we knew it. From how we interact with people to how we work, the ongoing pandemic has forced all of us to adjust and adapt. Employers around the world have embraced the remote working strategy to keep their businesses afloat. When it comes to webinars and remote work, though, all the pandemic did was speed up a process that was already coming about with the technological advances in our workplaces.
COVID-19 has brought change to the workplaces earlier than it was expected to arrive, but if there is one thing we learned during the pandemic, it is why remote work is the future of the modern workforce.
What Did We Learn about Remote Work During the Pandemic?
Initially, when companies were forced to work from home, many of them questioned its practicality and sustainability. They feared that the productivity of the employees would take a hit due to chaotic home environments and employee collaboration would not be as successful online. But the last five months of working during a pandemic have taught us how remote work can actually be productive. With the help of communication and collaboration technologies to hold meetings, interact with employees, assign tasks, track their progress, and complete projects, remote work can even be our future.
This shift towards remote work doesn't necessarily mean a complete turn away from offline operations. In fact, with services like the Arcules Video Surveillance as a Service, businesses can maintain a secure and monitored physical workspace while employees work remotely, ensuring a balanced and efficient hybrid work model.
Around 42% of USA citizens started working from home during the pandemic. If you ever thought remote work is going to make your employees less productive, a study conducted by Professor Nicholas Bloom in 2013 found that employees are 13% more productive while working from home. We hear similar testimonies from many remote workers during the pandemic. Even the tech giants, Facebook and Google have decided to allow their employees to work from home until the middle of next year.
As these data help us understand, remote work is not a problem as some initially believed, it may even be a solution that works for the post-Coronavirus world as well.
The Future of Remote Work in a Post-Pandemic World
The surge of companies moving to remote working strategies allowed us to understand why remote work is the future of the workforce. Today, with the fast-evolving technological platforms that help employees collaborate, remote work has become a practical strategy for businesses to carry out their operations even when the world returns to its normal after the pandemic.
As a national survey conducted by getAbstract revealed, 43% of American employees want to continue working remotely most of the time after COVID-19. The biggest advantage of remote work, as they see it, is not having to commute daily. Daily commutes to the workplace wastes hours of employees’ time that they can spend on something more productive. So, it’s not a surprise that the majority finds this as the biggest benefit of remote work. Other major talking points in favor of remote work according to the respondents include the flexible work schedule and increased productivity.
Another survey conducted by Gartner, with the participation of 317 CFOs and Finance leaders, revealed 74% of the companies plan to shift at least 5% of their workforce to permanent remote working positions after the pandemic. Two of the biggest companies in the world, Twitter and Fujitsu, have already given their employees the option to work from home permanently.
Remote work is now not only a band-aid to the COVID-19 economy. It is a real strategy that companies will pursue to reduce operational costs, improve workers’ productivity, and keep the workers satisfied.
How Does the Future of the Workforce Look with the Rising Popularity of Remote Work?
As organizations move to give permanence to remote work, the future workforce will be more dispersed than we see today. While some employees choose to work on-site, others will choose a more relaxed and flexible work environment in their homes or remote destinations. More workers will alternatively work in the office and remote locations, choosing where they work depending on time and personal preferences.
More companies will take their operations online where both remote and on-site workers can collaborate for business projects. Companies will be able to spend less on maintaining on-site facilities, but they will have to spend more on collaboration and communication technologies to ensure business operations are conducted smoothly.
Employees will mainly interact with each other through these collaboration platforms. Video conferences and messaging will become the main form of communication among them. Companies will schedule the majority of employee meetings through these platforms. The future where companies hold social events for remote workers through online platforms may not be that far.
In addition to employee interactions, companies will use communication and collaboration platforms to communicate with clients, interview applicants for job positions, and conduct employee workshops and training sessions. We already see the rise of these trends in companies working from home.
Of course, at the core of this workforce revolution is the advancement of technology, especially communication and collaboration technology. Finding the platform that suits your company’s needs will be vital to the future of remote work in your company. This is a decision you have to be really careful about in order to not waste loads of resources on the wrong solution.
Our product, LiveWebinar, provides a set of features that cater to the needs of almost all modern organizations. The fully browser-based platform has a highly customizable interface to add a touch of your own branding. Its set of collaboration and communication tools including whiteboards, breakout rooms, and polling and surveying tools opens your company to explore the full potential of remote work. You can conduct live webinars, hold meetings and training sessions, and interview new employees through our platform any time of the day and week.
As you will realize with the help of LiveWebinar, remote work is a strategy companies can use to maximize their profits and improve employee satisfaction. Even though its popularity was fast-tracked by the pandemic, the trend of remote work is here to stay. The faster you adapt to this upcoming change in the workforce, the faster you will start reaping its benefits. So, instead of preparing to go back to the old work culture post-COVID 19, start preparing to embrace the diversified world of remote work today.