Even though some saw remote work as a passing trend, it’s clear at this point that this is not the case. Far from it, in fact – many organizations have started to adapt to the new situation and have been investing lots of resources into ensuring that they can provide a good working environment for employees who want to work remotely.
If you still haven’t implemented the necessary changes in your organization, you shouldn’t waste any time. Because at this point, remote work is starting to become a powerful negotiating tool in the hands of job seekers. Don’t be surprised if your hiring slows down if you haven’t been providing reasonable conditions for those who want to work offsite. And it will only get worse if you don’t take the right measures.
Anticipating and Dealing with Security Issues
As great as the home office is, it has also introduced some problems that companies are still trying to sort out. Security is probably the biggest concern for many leaders. Working from home can expose the company’s infrastructure to more attacks from multiple sides, and it’s important to take serious measures to prevent those. Otherwise, you’re going to see various issues popping up, including ransomware and theft of personal data.
You should ramp up your security as early as possible if you’re planning to expand on the remote work capabilities of your company. Sometimes, you may even need a specialized security contractor to deal with some of the problems that you’ll face. Some of those partners can cost significantly more than regular security companies, but for a good reason – they know exactly what needs to be done to prevent the issues you’re trying to deal with.
Employee Relations Are Going to Change to Some Extent
Your workplace is also going to go through some transformations on the social front. Employee relations are going to change a lot in particular and will usually require a specialized service provider to handle any issues that arise. Working with someone like Pulpstream is recommended, because they will already be aware of most of the problems you could face when it comes to employee relations. Not only that, but they’ll know exactly what needs to be done to address those issues at their core.
It can take some time for all of this to settle, especially if your company was never big on remote work in the past. Be patient and provide your employees with all the reassurance they need about the transitions the company is going through. Ideally, you should have an open channel of communications that allows everyone to voice their concerns. Make sure that this channel is properly moderated and that you provide adequate mediation options.
Expanding Safely
Just because you’re opening your doors to remote work doesn’t mean that it’s now okay to expand your business infinitely. It’s true that physical expansion is often associated with severe risks that can be difficult to anticipate and mitigate. But remote work comes with its own challenges in this regard and those should not be underestimated.
Between the capacity of your network infrastructure, your HR and payroll departments, and the sheer chaos of organizing communications on that scale, a lot can go wrong if you let your company grow too fast without controlling it. In fact, you should pay special attention to how things are going during the first few months of adopting these new trends. That’s when your business is going to be at its most vulnerable. Once you’ve figured out how things work and what kinds of implications remote work introduces exactly, you can start to plan around them more adequately.
Is This Trend Here to Stay?
As we mentioned earlier, some companies and leaders were skeptical about the future of remote work. In the eyes of many, this was just a temporary trend that was guaranteed to end once the pandemic was over. But that’s not the case at all. And the sooner your business wakes up to that fact, the better your chances of surviving future market developments will be.
Don’t underestimate the importance of adopting remote work properly and integrating it into your operations as efficiently as possible. If you don’t do that now, you’ll still have to do it later, only it will be much more difficult because you’ll be out of time.
Make sure to work with the best partners you can find for this and listen to what they have to say. Adopting remote work is going to be a long transition with various obstacles to overcome. But if you do it right, your company will be much more prepared to face the future market. And we’re not even talking about the long-term future. It will only take a few years for problems to start cropping up in businesses that were not careful enough about adopting these developments into their workflow.
