Since the outbreak of COVID-19, many businesses have transitioned their work arrangements to remote work. Working from home has become the norm nowadays and is expected to remain so even after the pandemic. Read this article to learn more about the idea of working from home and how to manage it effectively.

Work from home (considered as working remotely at home) is a work arrangement where employees work at home instead of being physically at the office. They can still work their office hours, but from home.

According to a recent PwC US remote work survey of 133 US executives and 1200 US office workers, nearly one-third described their experience of shifting to remote work due to COVID-19 has been successful and very successful.

Source : Remote work survey, by 133 US executives, 1200 US office workers (PWC US Remote Work Survey of January 12, 2021) Q: How successful would you say the shift to remote work because of COVID-19 has been for your company? (Responded 'successful' and 'very successful')

Going back to work at the office seems difficult as many have settled successfully to remote work.
After all, we can realize that the implementation of remote work has been broader and successful.

With the emerging trend of remote work (mostly working from home) internationally, big tech companies' CEOs are paving the way to continue allowing their employees to work from home.

• Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook has announced that 50,000 employees and new recruits will be allowed to work from home on a permanent basis. Zuckerberg said in an interview that “We are going to be the most forward-learning company on remote work at our scale, with a thoughtful and responsible plan for how to do this”.

• Twitter and Square
Jack Dorsey, CEO of both Twitter and Square has announced that employees at both companies will be able to work from home ‘permanently’ even once offices begin to reopen. This means that many of the employees will be allowed to work from home continuously even after the pandemic ends and businesses return to normal.

• Shopify
Tobi Lutke, the founder and CEO of Shopify has announced that all the offices will be closed until 2021, and thereafter most employees will permanently work remotely.

Seeing the increasing demand for working from home, we can expect that the implementation of working from home “permanently” is not that implausible.

Source : Gartner (April 2020)

A Gartner, Inc. survey of 317 CFOs and Finance leaders revealed that 74% of companies will plan to permanently shift to more remote work post COVID-19. This survey clearly shows that work from home trend has taken off.

Considering that employees cannot physically be at the office, it is crucial to find an effective way to manage employees' time and attendance accurately.

However, this can be challenging if there is no appropriate tool prepared especially for small businesses. To successfully manage the workforce in the long term, employers and employees should adopt strategic ways to work from home.

• Reliable Time and Attendance Management
  Managers can keep employees on track by restricting where employees can clock in or clock out based on their locations(working out of office, work from home, etc).
  
  

• Easy Management for Different Types of Shift
  Shiftee supports a deemed work feature for a type of shift when accurate timeclock is difficult. This can be the best way to successfully manage the workforce without continuously monitoring the work based on workers' “desk time”.
  
  
  

The past two years have shown that employees can work from home and do it effectively with high productivity. For small businesses, however, having employees work from home will require high costs and a lot of changes.

Even with some drawbacks of working from home, the rise of remote work(including work from home policy) will gradually reshape the idea of how we “work”.

Click to Implement Remote Work Successfully with Shiftee