A switch to remote work, brought on by the Covid lockdown, has turned many workspaces upside down. At the same time, it also brought a few disadvantages of the classic office hours to light – namely, the lack of flexibility, excessive supervision, and not-so-perfect time optimization, which inevitably results in productivity loss. It’s true that remote work addresses many of those problems, but is it really as peachy as it sounds?
By mid-2024, many companies that eagerly embraced remote work models started rethinking their practices once again. A recent survey from KMPG shows that a vast majority of CEOs expect employees to return to office within the next three years. This development is not about the compulsive need to control the staff – in fact, remote work has a series of benefits for employers, but it became clear that this routine is not for everyone.
At the same time, workplaces are already transformed, so it’s highly unlikely that remote work will slip into oblivion. The practice, possibly in slightly rethought form, will most probably persist. That is why it’s so important to fully understand all the limitations of the model to fully leverage its benefits. Below are some of the biggest challenges of remote work, including a few unexpected ones, and functional solutions on overcoming these pitfalls.
Blurred lines between home and work
This is the biggest and most obvious challenge of remote work, and yet few people understand the full extent of it – that is until they try it. Even professionals who live alone are not entirely safe from household distractions, and those with families are at a constant risk of blurring these intangible lines between personal and professional.
The result of constant interruptions is either procrastination and failure to meet job requirements or constant overwork and quick burnout. Paradoxical as it sounds, these two are just different sides of the same coin – the missing border between home and work. Of course, no one implies that a classic office is 100% distraction-free. And yet, the time it takes to commute and the physical possibility of shutting down a work computer at 17.00 does the trick of building that psychological barrier.
Of course, similar routines can (and should) be built at home. A simple but effective start is setting up a separate work user on your laptop and using productivity apps that block distracting notifications during work hours. Alternatively, going for a walk after ‘office hours’ is a good idea – even if you’re just walking to the nearest store, it already does the trick of switching your brain into ‘downtime’ mode.
Disconnect from colleagues
Another challenge of the remote work model is the lack of personal eye-to-eye contact with colleagues. Usually, remote collaboration results in minor misunderstandings – we’ve all received work emails that leave room for interpretation, right? If the remote routine in a company is fine-tuned, minor communication errors usually get solved in no time. But there is a worst-case scenario, too.
Even though remote and hybrid work models have spread to different industries, some companies have not yet had time to adjust. Here, the disconnect often turns into a firewall preventing remote workers from contacting their immediate supervisors or colleagues working on the same tasks. Even if such an option is not entirely absent, communication delays may disrupt business operations, putting extra weight on remote workers.
Of course, technology can solve the challenge in part. Today, contact-finding software like SignalHire allows one to look up any person’s email, even if this information has not been shared during the onboarding stage. But then again, there is a huge difference between an honest mistake and consistent negligence – so if miscommunication and lack of support from management is a persistent issue, a better idea would be to use the same software to start searching for new employers.
Limited promotion opportunities
In a way, limited promotion opportunities are a side effect of constant disconnect from colleagues and, of course, management. In a recent interview, Erik Schmidt, former Google CEO, voiced an idea that professionals should return to offices if they wish to build a career, suggesting that people working from home will be denied promotion opportunities – or, at least, they will not experience those opportunities in full.
Of course, one should keep in mind that this is not an official statement from Google – Mr. Schmidt added that office work gives one a unique opportunity to learn new things, which eventually results in promotion, stressing that he himself learned by ‘hanging around the water cooler.’
Notably, Microsoft, one of the first advocates of hybrid work, recently commented on remote work, too. Allegedly, Scott Guthrie, one of the company executives, warned current Microsoft staff that remote work is not set in stone, and the return to office will be inevitable if there are major productivity declines. However, Microsoft itself has not yet officially confirmed the statement.
In any case, it already seems like major tech giants are reevaluating their priorities – so professionals may want to do the same to stay competitive and leverage all the benefits of hybrid, if not fully remote, work.
Unstructured workload of the gig economy
The gig economy, the pioneer of remote work, has always experienced most of its challenges. If remote hours are the result of working on a per-gig basis, more challenges add up, starting with unstable workflow. Even professionals who have been freelancing for years often report an unsteady workload from one month to another, along with associated income uncertainty.
Besides, this issue brings us back to challenge #1 – the more hectic the workload, the harder it gets to balance between personal and professional space. It is also easy to lose focus and motivation between projects because deadline discipline no longer applies.
Here, technology often comes to the rescue – both when discipline and income are concerned. Professionals who really wish to stay focused can use bulk email finder software to send out work pitches to potential employers or collaboration requests to other freelancers – here, the choice is strictly individual. Still, the idea is highly effective despite its simplicity – keep scheduling work hours even if you’re not working on any paid projects and use the ‘down’ time you have to strengthen your personal brand.
Technical concerns & cyber security risks
Even though this challenge is the last on our list, it is certainly not the least. In fact, cybersecurity is an ever-growing concern – and remote work often causes additional security hazards. Besides the vulnerabilities of collaboration software, remote workers stand an additional risk of mixing up their work and personal accounts, may occasionally forget to switch on a VPN, and sometimes access work files from insecure Wi-Fi networks – all of which are major causes of cybersecurity breaches and consequent data loss.
Of course, it is possible to mitigate some of these risks through regular updates, attention to cyber ‘hygiene,’ and overall discipline. At the same time, purely technical concerns do remain because not all companies equip their workers with the necessary hardware – another cause of data vulnerability. So, similar to the communication challenges already discussed above, not everything is up to the worker – the company must do its part, too.
All in all, remote work is not perfect, but it offers plenty of benefits for skilled, self-disciplined professionals who can manage their own time. No matter how you look at it, it all goes down to discipline and motivation. And despite some potentially disturbing comments about the return to offices from the major tech giants, it is very unlikely that the hybrid work scheme will be abandoned for good – after all, it has already proven its worth.