The pandemic is proving millenials right. Most of these people prefer working from home as they believe that remote work makes them more productive and allows them to have fun. Without the long commutes, that is associated with office work, employees can spend more time with their families privately and reduce the costs that come up with transportation. On the other hand, organizations are quickly realizing that working from home (WFH) allows them to get more done at a low cost. As such, some of them have started making working from home permanently.
Studies that have been carried out before indicated that people preferred working from home even without the coronavirus pandemic. The reason for this is the flexibility and changing priorities among people. Younger employees are increasingly looking for ways to be independent and get jobs done without necessarily doing their jobs in physical offices.
Although WFH has gained fame in recent days, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic, it has been there for years. Many smart businesses and large corporations had embraced this mode of working before. Some companies had already invested in mobile tools and expanded the ability of employees to work remotely. This was a response to young workers and their growing demands for this kind of arrangement. Many organizations now realize that for them to be competitive and attract the best talent in the market, they need to embrace new ways of working, and WFH is one of them. Using traditional ways of working that were in use two decades ago will not attract younger employees, mainly millennials.
Companies must take advantage of the sophisticated mobile technologies, smartphones, tablets, and the 5G connections that are taking over different industries. These technologies have enabled fast and secure processing of orders. They have also enhanced the processing of receipts, and the way documents can be shared between employees.
Despite the availability of the right remote working technologies, organizations need to define new remote working policies that cater for the cloud and mobile technologies, among others. Some have resisted this, but a day will come when they will have no other choice.
Away from the policies and technology, learning to work virtually is also part of the process of improving how to live digitally even after the pandemic. The change in the way we work will, without doubt, need advancement in our mindset as well as the architecture of our institutions. We will need to detach our thinking from physical offices as we move towards adopting the new viable solution in remote work. The biggest thing that small businesses are learning from all this is that remote work works. Other organizations now realize that employees can be trusted to work independently from home without too much supervision. Most importantly, it is emerging that virtual meetings and video conferences deliver just as much as physical meetings with less cost and needless time consumption.
From all these, a conclusion that can be drawn without much effort is that remote work will sooner rather than later replace physical workspaces as technology advances. Maybe the pandemic is exposing weaknesses in our current systems and giving us viable alternatives as we move towards technology-driven future.
