For years upon years, individuals had to fight for the privilege of working from home. Not all employers felt comfortable allowing staff to work outside of the office, fearing a lack of productivity; ability to supervise such workers, and team camaraderie.
Oftentimes, in order for people to receive this type of flexibility from an employer, they’d have to sacrifice things like salary expectations, vacation time and other forms of compensation offered by a company.
However, once COVID-19 hit, companies across many industries had to allow more employees to work from home, thanks to various health and safety measures being put into place. Negotiations for such a “perk” were put on hold indefinitely.
Now, as the world begins to open up again, companies are wrestling with the idea of whether or not they should continue to allow staff to work from home. While different companies will have different philosophical viewpoints on this matter, what can’t be disputed is that quality video conferencing technology exists and helps workers get their jobs done no matter where they’re situated.
Let’s take a close look as to why companies should continue with remote work initiatives:
Not Everyone is Ready to Come Back to the Office
Even though amazing video call solutions (like Banty) are available to companies and their employees, what shouldn’t be forgotten about is how uneasy some will feel about returning to the office.
There will now be individuals who – despite vaccines, booster shots, masking and heightened sanitization practices – feel fearful about coming to the office and possibly contracting COVID-19. This will likely be a psychological hurtle many people face in the months and years to come.
To give these individuals more time to get comfortable again, employers should embrace online meeting platforms and allow such employees the continual freedom to work remotely. If productivity does not slip, what benefit would there be in forcing someone to come back to the office before they are mentally ready to do so?
The Pandemic Showed How Productive Working from Home Can Be
If you speak with enough individuals who never had the privilege of working from home before the pandemic, many will tell you just how much more work they got done by not having to leave their residence.
Right away, commute time was deleted, as was often-distracting social interactions with coworkers that would usually take place at the desk, or while walking down an office hallway.
By working remotely, these individuals could structure their days much better. Social interactions with coworkers would occur during scheduled video conferences, or team-wide video calls – instead of at random times when project focus could be interrupted.
Remote Work Policies Prove Employees are Trusted
Thanks to online meetings, supervisors can still have regular face-to-face interactions with employees who work from home. This is beneficial for both parties.
For the employee, they don’t have to deal with the stress, fatigue and disruption that can come about when heading into an office. For the employer, this helps them keep tabs on what is going on from a productivity standpoint.
Ultimately, though, having a work from home policy in place shows the employee that they are wholeheartedly trusted by the employer. They will know that in order to continually have the freedom to work from home, their performance needs to stay strong.
From an employer standpoint, the trust they show in employees will more often than not result in quality work continuing to flow. If performance begins to suffer at some point, the arrangement can always be revisited.
Hopefully, though, the employer trust helps keep each and every staffer motivated to continually go above and beyond.
