Most common challenges of remote working (with solutions)

Everyone talks about the advantages of remote working. Skipping the daily commute to the office or working in pyjamas sounds like a dream come true. Moreover, employers are enjoying benefits of remote working: no more pricey office spaces or paying for travel expenses.

However, there are a few challenges of remote working you should consider as an employee and employer. In this article, you'll find most common challenges of remote working. No worries, we’ve provided solutions, too.

3 key challenges of remote working for employees

Employees might find it hard to adjust to remote working. The lack of a good work-life balance, finding appropriate working spaces, or scheduling too many video calls can make it hard to be productive. Additionally, all the above can cause a lack of motivation and burnout.

Read on to understand the key challenges of remote working for employees.

1. Maintaining a good work-life balance

Maintaining a good work-life balance while working from home can be challenging. In the office, it's easier to separate professional and personal life as work stays in the office, along with laptops and phones.

It's no surprise that disengaging from work after hours is one of the main challenges of remote working, as revealed by Buffer's State of Remote Work report. This concern was acknowledged by 22% of respondents. What starts as finishing one task quickly can often extend into hours, which employees may not get paid for.

Over time, an unhealthy work-life balance can affect employees' mental health and productivity, leading to burnout.

2. Finding appropriate working spaces

Unfortunately, not everyone lives in the big house or an apartment. Living in a smaller space or with more people can make it difficult to create dedicated working spaces.

Often, the bedroom or shared living room has to double as a home office.

Finding appropriate working spaces can show as one of the most significant challenges for employees. Report shows 10% of remote workers (Buffer's State of Remote Work report) face problems with distractions at home.

Sharing space with other family members often means experiencing interruptions. Children crying, pets jumping on a desk or postman ringing the bell become part of every day working spaces.

3. Scheduling too many video calls

While in the office, you can simply stop by someone's desk to solve a problem, but in a remote setting, you'll need to schedule video calls. Having too many video calls leaves insufficient time for productive work. Constantly jumping from one call to another and attempting to work in between consumes all the capacity for effective tasks.

Furthermore, employees often have limited control over their online calendars. With access to everyone's calendars, any team member can schedule a meeting. Additionally, many video calls result in follow-up calls, creating a vicious circle with an overload of video calls in the calendar. In reality, the majority of these calls could have been an email.

How to solve challenges of remote working for employees?

Potential solutions companies can implement to answer the challenges of remote working for employees:

• Conducting monthly surveys on work-life balance.
• Establishing a system to monitor workload.
• Setting up regular catch-ups with team members.
• Providing the possibility to use a co-working space.
• Limiting the number of video calls per day.

3 key challenges of remote working for employers

Employers might be reluctant to switch from the office to remote working. Communication tools and company culture look different in a remote working environment. To make it work, employers need to be aware of all the ups and downs of transitioning to remote work for their company.

Find out below what the challenges of remote working for employers are and how to solve them.

1. Choosing the right communication tool

Using too many different communication tools can be confusing. However, choosing the right communication tool can be equally challenging. With a diverse team working in a variety of job positions, it’s not easy to please everyone. While some might prefer old-school email, others might want to use Slack or collaboration tools such as Asana, Trello, or Monday.com.

Also, once you've invested in a communication tool, it’s going to be a nightmare to switch to another one. All these tools can be quite pricey for companies. It’s even worse when you pay for a communication tool you’re not even using.

2. Building a strong culture with remote employees

Building a strong culture with remote employees in different time zones is challenging. Each team member has their own schedule, making it difficult to establish a foundation of collaboration, communication, and team-building activities, which are essential for a strong culture. These aspects seem more difficult to nurture in a remote environment.

One of the crucial challenges of remote working for employers is getting to know their team. Without any in-person meetings and gatherings with the employees, it takes a considerable amount of time for team members to get to know each other.‍‍

Building a strong culture with remote employees requires more planning. In the office, employees would naturally spend time together during lunch breaks or meetings. In a remote setting, employees from different departments rarely get the chance to talk to each other.

3. Assessing team members’ work

Among the biggest challenges of remote working for employers is assessing their team members' work. As an employer, you might wonder if your employees are working or watching Netflix. Many employers are afraid to go fully remote solely because of that concern; they're worried employees are not doing their work.

With many social media posts of employees sharing hacks on how to pretend they're working; no wonder employers are concerned. In the office setting, employers have more control over their employees, making it easier to assess their team members' work.

How to solve challenges of remote working for employers?

Potential solutions for the challenges of remote working for employers:

• Use a free trial period before choosing a communication tool.
• Arrange training for the chosen communication tool.
• Create a guide for using the communication tool.
• Test the support team behind every communication tool.
• Learn how to build a strong culture with a remote team here.
• Use collaboration tools to track the team's results.
• Encourage open communication.

Other challenges of working in a remote team

Challenges of remote working for employees:

• Being proactive
• Inadequate equipment
• Too much supervising
• Feeling isolated
• Lack of motivation

Challenges of remote working for employers:

• Higher cybersecurity risks
• Employees retention
• Lack of documentation

How to solve other challenges of working in a remote team:

• When in the office, it’s easier to stop by employers’ desks and have a word. If your employees are struggling to share existing problems, appoint an HR professional to have regular meetings with employees. Introducing regular meetings will make it easier to detect if there’s a problem. These meetings can be useful for solving other challenges of remote working for employees: too much supervising, feeling isolated, lack of motivation, and retention.
• On a monthly basis, send out an email to check if the team has all the necessary equipment. Often, employees will shy away from asking for a new mouse or a chair themselves.
• Furthermore, there’s a higher cybersecurity risk when remote working. Engage your IT team to set up regular training for your employees.
• Finally, every manager should overlook the documentation of the processes. Use a collaboration tool for your team. Create guidelines for the documentation of processes. If someone from your team is ill, changes jobs, or needs to onboard a new employee, it’s crucial to have all the documentation in place.

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