Is the future of work remote?

As we ease tentatively into a land of no-restrictions, many businesses are contemplating what this might mean for them. With productivity at an all-time high, a Gartner CFO study suggested that 74% of businesses plan to permanently stick with remote work, even after the Covid-19 crisis. Even large social media presences like Twitter and Facebook are moving their businesses to a remote format, and anticipating a work from home lifestyle for at least the next decade. 

So is working from home, dare we say it…, ‘the new normal’? Even if full working from home isn’t, some form of hybrid working is here to stay. According to the 2021 Technologist Sentiment Report by Dice, only 17% of tech workers think working full-time in the office is extremely or very desirable, with 29% desiring fully remote work and 59% fancying a mixture of remote and hybrid. Enabling such a transformation in how we work is technology and key to transformation is bringing great people on board for the journey. A company’s ability to be flexible and enable choice is crucial for talent acquisition and retention.

What does recruitment look like in a remote workplace?

Recruitment in a world of remote work has meant heralding an exciting new era of geo-less boundaries – where you can recruit all over the world for the brightest minds to drive your business forward. Get tech brains from Toronto, business skill sets from California or growth hackers from London… remote work unlocks the world’s talent and places them at fingertips’ reach of a keyboard.

Redefining the boundaries geographically allows businesses to not just hire all around the world, but look at how their employees can work best in a way that suits their lives. Previous obstacles such as timing and accessibilities are removed, truly transforming the workforce, in a step towards diversity.

How does technology help a work-from-home lifestyle?

Zooming and staying in touch:

Allowing employees to stay engaged through the screen has been vital to workplaces enabling a workforce to function from wherever suits them. The introduction of video conferencing on a global scale, with household names like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts undoubtedly proved to many that workplaces can succeed and even thrive remotely, surpassing any preconceived limitations of geographical location. 

Despite missing workplace coffee break chats, innovation of instant messages and video conferencing has allowed users to come close to in-office exchanges. Platforms such as Slack and Trello transform and bridge the social gap and connect the office remotely. With the capacity to have separate channels for communication on different projects, creative designs in apps allow for natural conversations and effective collaboration.

Collaboration and automation: 

Having an open workplace that facilitates remote working and provides employees with the right tools allows them to produce high-quality work autonomously, at a time that works for them and no matter their location in the world. High-tech services such as G-Suite and the Cloud, have streamlined backups and kept documents in shared virtual spaces that allow real-time collaboration. 

This technology is indispensable to online working and also provides cost-effective alternatives to hardware and infrastructure expenses; an added benefit for companies starting up or looking to cut overhead costs. A further way to cut costs is embracing smart technologies to help with administration such as AI apps like Dewo, to intelligently schedule meetings around remote team timetables or software such as Timely to automate time trackers, and help managers balance remote workloads.

Training Tools:  

Key to employing new talent is bringing them on remotely. Teaching a new employee how to use a complex server or database takes time within an office environment, so providing this training remotely is, understandably, even more challenging. 

However, there are a whole host of technological tools out there to make this a smooth process that will allow new members of the team to seamlessly integrate. There are endless apps to enhance training procedures that will benefit incoming employees even from a distance. Recruitment, even today, doesn’t need to be a challenge. 

Will work from home continue in the future? 

The advances of technology for remote working have been profound over the last year and improvements continue to be made. 5G is rolling out and virtual reality conference rooms are an exciting venture that may be closer than we think. Never before has the world of work looked so bright for an untapped pool of potential employees across the globe.

Touchpoint actively harnesses the opportunity of recruiting in a remote-first world. The developments in technology are transforming the world of remote work to expand the office workplace into a global network that allows employees and businesses to thrive.