The Future Of Remote Working

Given the chaos caused by the Covid 19 pandemic over the last two and half years and ongoing uncertainty about future variants, it’s difficult to predict with complete accuracy what the future of remote work will look like.

However, considering the amount of people that suddenly had to work from home following the initial Covid outbreak (and the different ways of working, policies and behaviours that followed), we have been given a glimpse of how remote or distance working might evolve in the future.

With remote working set to remain, we will go on to explore in more detail how the future might look. We’ll also investigate how you can better support staff in this changing workplace environment. But before we can do that, we need to investigate what’s been going on more recently.

How the future of remote work might look

Similarly, to the interesting trends we’ve just seen, the ongoing popularity and surge in remote working, has given us an insight into how it might look in the future.

Here are some interesting areas to think about:

Working hours

Given that remote working has already granted staff greater flexibility over how they choose to work their hours, it’s not too surprising to hear that we’re getting increased calls for a four-day working week.

Employers and employees are having to rethink how work is completed and are increasingly becoming aware of the many benefits from new ways of working. So much so, that it’s likely we may see a 4-day working week in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime, for those employers who have already adopted it, the lure of a 4-day week and the option to work remotely could become a valuable bargaining chip in helping them attract new recruits.

Company structures

The increased uptake of remote working over the last couple of years, has already begun shaping the structure of companies. Many have already downsized their physical office space, with future changes to company structures only set to increase further.

Interestingly, when you think of the many different job roles in a typical office, and how they benefit from remote work, such changes are less surprising. For example, for those in development teams, a quieter environment which distance working lends itself to, can help get them into a better mindset for coding, which can really help their efficiency. Similarly, although creative teams can benefit from quieter times when it comes to thinking about and creating strategies, they also need an environment that nurtures collaboration when they have to work with their teams to brainstorm ideas.

Companies with a diverse make up of teams will want to be able to accommodate a mix of needs. This includes catering for those who want to work fully remote and those that prefer hybrid working. Subsequently, this has led to the emergence of the ‘hub and spoke’ company model, which is likely to grow further.

This model typically comprises of a central office ‘hub’ with decentralised, satellite ‘spoke’ offices closer to where employees live. In contrast to the traditional HQ, employees can work from central and local office spaces, depending on their varying needs.

Location

Following on from these company structure changes, the potential locations that remote workers operate from is also set to grow.

Working from home is currently still the most popular location for remote workers to operate from. However, other working arrangements including flexible workspaces are experiencing an increasing uptake.

Subsequently, with falling demand for large physical office spaces, growth in flexible workspaces like those outlined below is set to continue:

Technology

From the high-speed internet, emails and video conferencing software to online storage, collaboration and security tools, smartphones and tablets. The many advances of recent years have made it much easier to set up a workstation and operate from anywhere.

However, it’s through the next wave of innovations where remote working trends are likely to become even more entrenched in work culture and easier to manage.

Here’s what we could see next:

Supporting employees in a changing workplace

Whether you already have a sizeable remote workforce, or you’re still in the process of developing one. Whatever stage you’re at, moving to a remote or hybrid working arrangement is a major undertaking. It’s one that requires ongoing monitoring and tweaking, if you’re to gain maximum value from it.

Your staff who are at the front end of the policies and procedures you’ve put in place for distance working, are the best placed to tell you how well it is working. So, you need their feedback to make this work and the best way to do this is through surveys.

From employee engagement and experience to staff satisfaction, motivation, pulse surveys and more. There is a raft of surveys you can deploy to check how your staff are feeling. Then through this you’ll be able to identify and make the changes they want to see.

Ultimately, feedback is the key to maintaining happy and highly engaged staff that will improve your business performance and productivity. And the importance of this will only continue to grow as more technologies and ways of working emerge.