Currently, teleworking is offered in many companies, regardless of the sector to which they belong, since most of the daily tasks do not require the worker’s physical presence in a specific place. Workers can carry out their work remotely thanks to the digital transformation. Their home is their office. However, this does not prevent them from participating in the company’s daily schedule in virtual meetings, calls, emails and decision-making in real-time. However, some sectors that promote teleworking is an almost impossible task, such as customer service. The employee is forced to work in person due to functions such as receiving clients at the office that prevent them from working from home. Below we analyze all the advantages that teleworking offers both for employees and for the company.

Lower Cost In Facilities And Infrastructures

The costs for facilities and furniture represent the second-highest value in the budget items of most companies. Therefore, more and more companies are promoting teleworking. Instead of assigning employees a permanent position in the office, they reserve it only for the days they need it. In this way, the company only pays for the space it needs to establish its office, which is much smaller and thus eliminates a multitude of expenses such as utilities, insurance, taxes, cleaning, maintenance, repair or security.

Accelerate Business Speed

The ability of a company to flexibly increase staff and tasks is a weapon of great competitive power. Teleworking allows workers to be located in the areas or regions where they do business, providing more effective support and achieving greater control over it. In this way, a global strategy where work follows the schedules of different countries through offshoring allows companies to achieve productivity 24 hours, seven days a week.

Business Continuity

Companies that offer telework to their employees must guarantee them uninterrupted access to all the data and applications that are necessary for them. A well-developed virtual structure that allows maintaining good teleworking conditions will provide an efficient basis to keep the business running in the face of any interruption, planned or not, such as a maintenance task or a natural disaster.

Work Without Borders

Teleworking offers the possibility of creating multi-geographic work teams made up of managers, clients and partners from different companies from various locations. Until a few years ago, these teams worked through conferences or meetings that they held in person in a specific place, and that involved a significant investment of time and money, forcing members to spend a lot of time outside their homes. Now, teleworking offers the possibility of carrying out all these meetings and meetings digitally, saving on the costs and time that these trips require.

Also Read: COVID-19 – Tips For Teleworking Without Losing Productivity

Recruit The Best Employees

All companies that want to hire new personnel must face a generational change that brings a large number of highly qualified professionals who are perfectly knowledgeable about new technologies. The teleworking modality allows hiring personnel beyond geographical limitations, allowing the most talented employees to be obtained regardless of residence.

Increase Employee Retention Rate

When an employee adopts telecommuting, employment, personal business, and family life are rarely kept separate. Mobile work policies offer workers the flexibility they need to balance work and family life. This formula is beneficial for the company as it allows employees to increase their performance while keeping them satisfied and predisposed to continue working thanks to good working conditions.

Running a business is not a simple matter. To increase job performance and retain talent, it is essential to allow optimal work and family reconciliation conditions for workers. Thanks to the advantages offered by new technologies, it is possible to achieve this. In addition to teleworking, other tools can help you automate other management processes in your company.

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The technically possible location independence does not only lead to globalized activities. It also leads to completion options independent of fixed locations. The growing number of startups in e-commerce has created many new job profiles, such as online marketing managers. With the convergence of the analog and digital business world, there are increasing opportunities for employers and employees to do their work from home or have it done. The employment models range from part-time outsourcing to complete exemption from compulsory attendance.

Working From Home Is Becoming Increasingly Common.

If you look around in the modern labor and job market, you will come across many models offered in a way specific to the industry. Internationally active companies cushion time differences and business hours. Young e-commerce startups can expand their business activities with limited office space investment. All industries can appeal to workers who would otherwise not be available to the labor market. The creative possibilities also lead to increased outsourced employees in long-established and conservatively managed companies. With your home office, you not only provide independence in terms of time and space. Depending on the contract, you vary your workload according to seasonal developments.

More Freedom With Greater Responsibility

An unavoidable consequence of the outsourced work arises from a change in the weighting of the work content. The tasks and goals must be defined and evaluated in a more result-oriented manner. As you work from home, you take greater responsibility for achieving these goals. Failing technical equipment or other external influencing factors are not “absorbed.” Only the result in the given time window counts. Viewed from the opposite perspective, this form of work enables you to create paid freedom through effective work. This would quickly be perceived as “lazing around” in a conventional company or office.” They are expressions of your accomplishments and abilities.

Characteristics Develop Into Advantages or Disadvantages.

Right away, working from home sounds more tempting than daunting. Depending on the job and industry, a stable internet connection and a computer are often sufficient to set up and run your home office. This form of work, also known as telework and remote work or e-work, has many advantages for you. However, it would help to consider specific factors that can quickly trigger adverse effects. The following five main advantages and possible disadvantages apply to a home office.

The Advantages

• Flexibility: Working from home gives you the greatest flexibility imaginable in connection with work for you as an employee. Childcare, lonely pets, and unpunctual delivery people or meter readers no longer require organizational miracles from you. You design your working environment according to your taste and look out of the window at work or sit in a work chair. You determine work breaks according to your taste.
• Saving time and money: The daily way to the conventional workplace generates costs and loss of time. Even with shorter distances, repeating at least ten times a week saves money and time. You save on travel and fuel costs in the home office and are “off work” as soon as you finish your work. Bad weather and traffic-related delays are no longer an issue.
• Concentration: In many companies and offices, open-plan offices accommodate the workplaces. Noises, noise levels, and room air conditions disturb people’s concentration. When you work at home, you design your way of working and your environment consistently according to your personal needs.
• Time management: Apart from the no longer required arrival and departure times, the timing of your work content is solely your responsibility. How you implement the targets in detail is up to you. Typical creative freedoms are typical of lots of short breaks, a few longer breaks from work, and the completion of difficult and unloved tasks at the beginning or end of your working day.
• Self-discipline and motivation: If you work from home, you can individually consider personal habits and your character imprints in your working hours. In times of high productivity, you “work away” the largest workload. Your performance doesn’t matter, and no one cares if you’re doing quarterly closing in your pajamas.

The Disadvantages

• Separation of work and leisure: Theoretically, a separation can be created, for example, by a lockable study. In practice, however, it has been shown that private calls and visits and contacts made by other household members mix with the actual working hours. In the worst case, you may have the effect of doing both, but nothing right.
• Disturbances from the private sphere: The advantage of the higher ability to concentrate in the self-designed environment can be lost due to the private life situation. The finished laundry, the whistling kettle, and a family member’s question are disturbing and can only be prevented with rigid and undesirable means.
• No social working life & communicative exchange: Working individually and alone lacks many social components that can be very important for working people. At home, you forgo the chat in the tea kitchen. A question from a colleague can turn into an extensive e-mail exchange with great potential for misunderstandings from just a few exchanged words. There is no mutual personal motivation and the notion of solidarity among “fellow sufferers” decreases.
• The sole responsibility for technical matters: Even if your employer provides sufficient and reliable equipment, you assume the unavoidable responsibility in your home office. An in-house call to the administrator does not resolve power and system failures.
• Self-discipline and motivation: You should have a basic disposition to exercise self-discipline when working alone. At first, nobody tells you what to do, when, and how. However, this supposed freedom harbors the pitfall of regularly missing the actual goals. You should be able to design and follow a time corset. To motivate yourself, you can develop rituals.

Requirements And Contract Design

In addition to considering whether you are the type to work from home, your employment relationship must be clearly defined organizationally and legally. Financial or material expenses and equipment should be planned in consultation with the supervisor. Time and target specifications are an important basis. However, they should be formulated in an adaptable and changeable manner. Liability and insurance for damage to company property or non-compliance with work specifications must be contractually fixed.

Plan Secure Communication Channels

Even if you work from home, communication with colleagues, customers, and superiors must function smoothly and reliably. The formulation of the reporting obligation from the business world is helpful. The reporting and documentation system should be carried out in as much detail as possible in the contract. Decentralized work situations always risk destroying valuable work performance due to transmission errors. At least two mutually independent communication levels are recommended to be on the safe side. Even if your employer does not require you to be present, you should consider voluntary, informal meetings at reasonable intervals.

Individual Means To The Desired End

Without a doubt, your home office offers you the greatest possible freedom in organizing your work. For this freedom, you have to take on more personal responsibility. To act successfully and according to plan, you have to assess your work efficiency, optimize your time management and develop sufficient self-motivation again and again. Creative freedom has the hidden advantage of using any means that helps you with self-organization. It doesn’t matter whether you appreciate classical music in the background, want to work in business clothes or tracksuits, or use lots of chocolates as a reward for the stages you have set yourself. As a central answer to whether working from home is suitable for you, you should give room to your employer’s wishes. It expects defined results from you at specified points in time. How you got there is irrelevant. Find out how much time you spend completing which tasks and what gives you strength and motivation.

Also Read: Steps To A Secure Home Office

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When looking at the current world of work, the question quickly arises why many “normal office and screen workplaces” have not found their way into the mobile or home office. The transition to a home office or the changeover to a mobile workplace should be easy: There are probably hardly any employees who do not have an Internet connection at home in one way or another. Devices such as notebooks should also be widespread. In principle, “mobile work” from your own home should be quick and easy.

Home Office and “Mobile Working” Are Different Things.

Unfortunately, the terms mobile working and home office are often mixed up: “After all, a mobile employee can also be at home and work with his notebook” is a joint statement. If you ignore the technical differences, mainly trading unions, IHK, and lawyers vehemently speak out against this mixture.

They describe colloquially subsumed under home office, then technically with the somewhat antiquated term “telework.” The most important difference: According to the workplace ordinance, such a teleworking station is ” a permanently set up computer workstation in the private area of ​​the employee.” In addition, there is an agreement on weekly working hours and the duration of this facility. The company is then also responsible for setting up this workplace.

It’sIt’s different with mobile work: the workplace moves with the employee – he can sit at home and in a coffee shop or on the terrace of a hotel. In these cases, the workplace ordinance does not apply. That is why many companies insist on talking about mobile working, even if they send their employees to the “home office” in principle.

Challenges For Technology

One of the most significant challenges that the “new work” from the home office confronts both the IT specialists in the company and the employees in their homes is the connection to the Internet, which is available to the employees. Even if the company equips its “external” specialists with the latest IT technology and provides you with complex VPN, such as technology, a weak, unreliable Internet connection can quickly destroy any hope that employees will work the same way they would office. 

Home Office In Focus

Cloud solutions offer another way into the corporate network: They are already used by most companies today. Many users are already using solutions such as Dropbox or OneDrive in one way or another. If the employees in the company already use solutions such as Microsoft 365, they can usually continue to use them very quickly from the home office. Suppose a correspondingly good, stable connection is available. In that case, companies can use Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions to provide their users with complete Windows or Linux desktops, which the user can then access via the Internet. To be available. He then works in the browser or with a particular client, ideally shielded from his home environment.

Communication: From “Alone” To “Perpetual Video Conference”

At first glance, it may seem nonsensical to talk about changed communication concerning work in the home office: After all, we communicated via email and telephone even before the pandemic. Video conferences also took place before that time – although perhaps not at the current frequency.

Particularly in isolation caused by remote work, targeted communication between employees and between home office workers and the company is of great importance. So it is not enough to equip the colleagues who are now working externally with the right technology by using remote work control software but to use the communication channels intensively – in both directions. Contact with the team, colleagues and other employees mustn’t be limited to a daily video conference limited: All employees in the home office must be able to communicate immediately and directly with other team members in case of doubt without them having to wait long for a response to an email message. In many cases, only a face-to-face conversation will help. To do this, IT must be able to provide as many channels as possible.

It is solutions like Slack that enable and facilitate communication in the team at the level of chats and corresponding channels. The advantage of communication via email is that a kind of direct conversation or discussion is conducted. Indeed, such email applications in the business environment will not cause the death toll, even if companies like Slack and Asana postulate this repeatedly. Still, it can be a goal to get older employees used to it, with chat tools and Messenger applications actively communicate.

Also Read: What Is The SaaS Model

Home Office And (Once Again) Shadow IT.

The security requirements for working from home do not differ from those that (should) also apply in the company. Mostly “confidentiality”, “integrity” and “availability” are mentioned as goals of the security measures. But it is understandably much easier for the IT team in charge to set a goal such as confidentiality (i.e., the protection of information, data and other IT resources from unauthorized access) in the protected company network than on possibly even private computers of the users in the home office to reach.

The so-called shadow IT is a big problem: The IT employees usually already know this from their daily work in the company, because there, too, the employees use their notebook or tablet from time to time to access the company network or even to send company data (if possible via a private email account). But in these situations, the IT team can usually quickly track down and stop the use of unauthorized devices, applications, and services. But what users use in the home office, they cannot promptly determine or even prevent.

Sixty-three percent of those surveyed stated that they access documents and services of their employer with remote end devices. Still, 58 percent admitted to saving or transferring work data on personal USB sticks. Finally, 55 percent of respondents said they use private email or file-sharing services in the cloud for work purposes. Thus, for IT professionals working remotely and using digital workstations, the following still applies: “Security, security and once again security.”

The post VPN, Remote Desktop & Co. – That’s How We Work Today appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

Defining the guiding principles

The bond between trust and being transparent

Working remotely was very strange for the workforce to adapt to permanently until the normal situations rebound again. There might be many issues that the employees might be going through, which can affect the quality of the work that is being done. So it is very important to ensure the bonding with the team by sharing mutual trust so that the employees can effectively open up about the peak activity times and times when they go out of focus. This ensures the bonding with the entire team and can even increase the progress of the work. Being transparent helps promote an environment that is highly motivating for the employees, which helps them stay connected in the newly barged virtual atmosphere.

Chalking out the strategies!

When the team is not connected without the proper formulation of plan and strategies on how to move forward, it can seriously affect the entire organization’s merits and impact it deeply. When strategies are properly aligned, it becomes easier for the employees to actively align themselves to the allotted schedules and strategize their work. It will ensure that the employees execute their work correctly and the allotted tasks are met on time. People management is indeed a highly demanding element in any organization, and for the same reason, new management software like Lattice ensures that their employees do not appear like mere co-workers but upgrade themselves to top performers every month.

Managing the team effectively.

The managers are responsible for leading the team in any situation. Effective team management involves understanding their employees and guiding them to correct any errors and problems that are likely to arise. Communication is the ultimate bonding that has to be ensured with the employees. In this remote working style, staying connected via online platforms is the only support that the employees might be getting. So the manager must act pro-actively to ensure that proper guidance and all the needed support are made available to the employees at the time of need and actively contribute to the company’s success.

Monitoring productivity

Ensuring productivity is an added concern in recent times due to the newly adopted working style in the remote mode. Managers should know the different monitoring platforms by which they can easily access the activities of their employees. Distractions can be at a peak in the remote mode of working, and the employees can get impacted. Work Examiner has emerged as a remote team monitoring solution that can solve the problems associated with tracking productivity in their employees. It has been able to attract a large user base that uses this platform to monitor its employees. It can produce detailed reporting on the idle time and also help to block access to certain sites without informing the users that they are being watched. Using this software, the managers can easily get notified if the employees break any of the protocol’s provisions, and it can be useful for the manager to easily declare the best performer of the company actively!

Recognizing their efforts

Fighting with distractions and completing their work can be quite challenging. The managers can try to recognize their employees for the small milestones they achieve in the allotted work. It can help to boost their overall morale and confidence levels and can directly help them be more productive and start working more with vigor. Such compliments can make their day, and they will try to keep themselves on track, and the managers can effectively manage the team by guiding and encouraging them. So this method is one of the easiest compared to the rest due to the absence of any tracking software that had to be used to track them.

These are some of the guiding principles that might be useful for the team leaders to manage their team in the present scenario. In addition, many software to track productivity and people management are coming up and trying to make their entry into the market considering the remote ways of working.

Also Read: A Brief List Of Forex Brokers

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But once this first challenge, the forced transition to teleworking, has been overcome, most SMEs ask themselves how to maintain productivity levels in this new work regime. And it is that despite having technology on our site, it is necessary to keep the teams coordinated and motivated.

How to Increase Productivity in Times of COVID-19

In a normal situation, the introduction of remote work would be done gradually. Still, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to adopt this model overnight, which can cause losses in work productivity. To mitigate these effects as much as possible, workers must adapt to the new system as quickly as possible. This is possible if we follow a series of guidelines:

Give Your Team The Necessary Tools

If you promote teleworking in your company, you must provide your employees with the means and computer equipment necessary to develop the activity. This is essential if we want to maintain office productivity.

Training is key to increasing performance and competitiveness. Employees must know the resources they can count on and know how to handle the different applications and work tools. To make sure that the whole team is in tune, you can carry out a follow-up, test and evaluate the tools together, get your team’s opinion, and try to solve the difficulties.

Define a Clear Schedule and Goals

To increase productivity while teleworking, it is necessary to set clear and measurable objectives. To do this, you can develop an action plan or guide that includes these objectives, their corresponding indicators, the tasks to be carried out, the steps to follow, and the entire team’s tools. You can define a schedule that includes recurring meetings or a time when all members are available.
The whole team must be clear about the objectives and tasks that each of the members has to carry out. This will help you achieve greater transparency, involvement, and productivity.

Also Read: Good Teleworking Practices Everyone Should know In 2021

Prioritize Communication

Communication plays a fundamental role in conveying the company’s objectives and priorities and maintaining the motivation and productivity of the work teams. The entire team must work aligned with the objectives and in constant collaboration. If all team members know the project’s status, it will be much easier to spot problems and opportunities.

Today, there is a multitude of platforms and online tools that help maintain fluid communication between co-workers. In addition to meetings or video conferences with multiple participants, these tools allow you to exchange and share files, organize tasks, or keep track of the entire team’s activity.

Work in The Cloud During The COVID-19 Pandemic

Thanks to the cloud, teleworking is much easier. Cloud tools facilitate communication, allowing you to view, edit and share information quickly and efficiently, from anywhere and anytime. In addition, it allows two or more people to work simultaneously.

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