Advantages and disadvantages of virtual working – 12 months in

Many organisations and individuals are now 12 months into the biggest ever global experiment in new ways of working. Around 40% of employees worldwide have experienced periods working from home, many for the first time.

As things start to stabilize, organizations are realizing opportunities to

• improve productivity
• raise engagement
• lower facilities and other costs
• get access to a broader pool of talent

Cost savings are always popular and apply both to organizations and individuals.

• according to PGI news, the average office and facilities saving for employers is $10,000 per employee working remotely per year
• according to TECLA, a global IT recruitment company, remote workers save around $7,000 per year from reducing the cost of commuting, food, clothing, and childcare

Many organizations remain concerned with factors like

• how can we exercise control in this more distributed environment?
• will collaboration be as effective?
• what will be the impact on our people’s wellbeing?
• can we maintain creativity virtually?
• how do we manage performance when people are working remotely?

The benefits are compelling, but we do need to overcome the concerns to make this way of working sustainable.

Our participants tell us they experience a range of advantages and challenges when working remotely.

Our job as leaders is to deliver the benefits and manage or eliminate the potential challenges.

There is also a big difference between coping with a pandemic and finding ways to succeed from home in the short term and developing a much longer term and sustainable pattern of work which incorporates remote and hybrid working.

The good news is that none of these challenges are insurmountable. We have spent the last 30 years finding tools and solutions to manage all of them.

Our new book Leading remote and virtual teams – Managing yourself and others in remote and hybrid teams or when working from home will give you lots of ideas, practical tools, and coaching questions to help you and your colleagues deliver the benefits, overcome the challenges, and develop a sustainable pattern of work that works for you as individuals and for the organization as a whole.

The book is also a reflection of our own long-term working reality. Our company Global Integration has been “virtual first” for over 30 years. For the first 15 years, we did not have any office locations. The authors have both spent all of our careers at Global Integration working from home and spend most of our time either training or managing people who work remotely.

We also have a whole range of virtual and hybrid team training modules that cover key content in this area and help teams facilitate the right solutions for their reality.