Our world changed dramatically last year as we struggled to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the biggest changes the pandemic brought about was the switch to remote working. Many digital marketing agencies, call centers, and other businesses shifted their operations to their employees’ living rooms or home offices, and they haven’t looked back.
Indeed, many companies in various industries have had so much success with remote working that they’ve decided to make the change permanent. Furthermore, many companies are continuing to adopt this business model. In this article, we’ll discuss some of the pros and cons of having a remote workforce. By the end of this read, you might be ready to send your own employees home (along with some office equipment).
Remote workforces use the best and latest tech.
Remote working means having to coordinate business operations for the entire organization across digital channels. Your team members have to be able to connect to your company’s network and customer data to provide a positive customer experience. Furthermore, your support team needs to communicate and collaborate, meaning they need to share data and ideas in real time. As you can imagine, going remote is a technology-intensive transformation.
A great example of the advanced call center technology for remote working is the virtual omnichannel contact center. Their customer service agents can provide patrons with a seamless customer experience across various touchpoints, including social media, phone calls, and SMS while accessing customer data, over a secure network, from home.
Going remote can increase productivity.
You would think working from home would hurt employee productivity. After all, remote working is a free pass to scroll on social media and binge-watch your favorite shows all day, right? Counterintuitively, evidence shows that many employees tend to be more productive working from home.
Furthermore, remote workforces give you access to a greater talent pool since your search for potential hires isn’t bound by location. A marketing company might see remote working versus on-premise working as analogous to advertising in-house vs agency marketing. When you cast a nationwide net, you’re bound to get much more talent than you would by hiring a local house team. Remote working gives you that flexibility.
Remote workforces have happier employees.
One thing companies that switch to a remote workforce notice is that their employee retention rates climb as a result of letting their employees work from home. Indeed, there’s something about working from home that makes people want to stay on the job.
People are generally happy when they get to work from home, and happy employees provide a better customer experience than stressed ones. One of the keys to performance management is providing a great experience for your team members, and what’s better than working from home?
It makes training and team-building harder.
One of the cons of remote working is that it can make training new staff members more difficult. It’s much easier to learn your job when you have someone there with you showing you the ropes as you go. However, with the right online tools, you can make recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and training easier.
Remote work often requires more meetings and longer hours.
Another thing you can expect if your company goes remote is to have to schedule more meetings and possibly have to work longer hours. The fact is working from home can be distracting at times, leading to it taking longer than usual to do your normal workload. Furthermore, you’ll have to schedule frequent virtual meetings with your team members to keep everyone on the same page.
Remote working can reduce employee turnover and increase productivity. Furthermore, it provides access to more talent since location isn’t a factor. Additionally, remote working is one of the best ways to cut overhead costs. On the other hand, it makes training and team-building more difficult. Remote working also often requires regular virtual meetings and longer hours. Ultimately, it appears the pros outweigh the cons. So, is your company ready to join the remote revolution?
