Working remotely: A complete guide to understanding everything

Most companies and the business firm were supporting the working from office only theory considering it more effective in sense of getting more productivity and keeping track of the employees' performance. Different suggestions were colliding on different platforms, and then sudden havoc of COVID-19 appeared in 2019 in China and spread all over the world in a very short meantime.

This worldwide pandemic restricted the people to go outside, forced them to stay at home, and take care of themselves and their families. But what about the work, the livelihood, and the projects that had been started before the strong wave of the Coronavirus hit the world? Almost two-thirds of the firms were blank and did not know how to compete in this situation and sustain their economy by keeping their workers safe and sound. Let’s move on to know the details of Working Remotely. A complete Guide.

What is remote work?

When you are not going to the office or a particular place fixed for work by your company or a firm, and you are working from home most probably online from anywhere of the world no matter which country or city is, you are an aid to be working remotely. When you are working remotely, you do not need to wear a formal dress, shoes, and tie, or travel from your home to the workplace. You are supposed to remain the place where you are and perform your duties. 

 According to a study a huge number of companies you may say about 70% companies have transformed their office-based business into remote work business after looking deeply into the present pandemic situation and upcoming expected circumstances. Almost 80 percent of the staff is doing remote work and only 20 to 25 percent of staff members are working in an office for maintenance of record, infrastructure, and physical proof of their companies. 

How can you do remote work? Working Remotely. A complete Guide.

Now the question arises, how can we do remote work or you may say, what are the types of remote work different companies offering to employees?  I think three major categories of remote work offered by the companies such as working freely, working from home for few days and the rest from office, etc. you can enjoy remote work  

By doing freelancing

Freelancing has become more common now but if take a review and look behind, we will see the majority of people were not even familiar with the word freelancing. It is a job where you are not an employee and there is no boss to control you. You are the only boss of your doings but at the end when the deadline arrives, you are answerable to that particular person for whom you are working or for whom you took responsibility to complete the assigned task. 

Freelancing is about doing paid tasks by placing your offer to a particular company, organization, or an individual or accepting the offer respectively. You are independent to work within the committed duration. In freelancing, you are not supposed to stick to a specific company, you can find other better opportunities and even after that you can become a client and make offers to other unemployed people and the game goes on. 

General remote work

The companies that do not have a physical entity or fully working online, hire employees to perform different tasks to manage or collaborate their online work. Such companies offer you remote work all six days of a week in which you have to be online creating proof that you are working. They hire you for fixed hours per day and mention it in their agreement by asking either you will be available during these working hours or not. 

Here you are not free to work like in freelancing, you have to spend to spend fixed hours on a website, or a page, or any other online platform they have asked you.

By doing work on flexible time and place

Some companies hire the staff to work remotely for few days a week and the rest to work from the office on regular rotations like if a group of 10 people is working for two days in the office, the other two groups are working from home, and when this group has completed its office workdays, it is going to enjoy remote work while one of the other group will work from the office. The repetition goes on and the working slop is going smooth whole the week by using limited resources. 

This type of work is now being observed in many organizations and companies, especially in educational organizations to avoid the rush on the particular places and it is working well.

How to get the fruitful output of remote work?

If you have hired for remote work, now what to do to get maximum fruitful output to retain your position and performance? There are different designations of remote work in which you will be working as a team or sometimes you are working independently. If you are working independently, you are the boss, you are the team, you just need to look at your performance as in freelancing.

But if you are working in a team or you are supposed to manage a team, where you need to be very conscious and ready to perform multiple tasks, some of which are discussed below for your convenience.

1. Train your team

If you are working remotely and having a responsibility to manage a team, its task, showing the team members the right direction by floating instructions, you need to be more proactive and energetic instead of getting lazy by considering your boss is not looking for you. Your team's performance indicates your collaboration with your team.

You need to train the team member to assure maximum output. You can train your team by 

• By having a virtual meeting

Keep your team in visual interaction, so that the member could remember that you are concerned for their performance and you want them to perform outstandingly. Being a manager of a project or a task, you should have a virtual session for training your team at least twice a week. Ask them about the troubles they are facing during work or provide them a workshop to enhance their skills and to motivate them towards the work.

Now there have been introduced several online meeting application for virtual meetings like Zoom, team, Google class, and many others for your convenience. Make better use of technology to boost the energy of your team members.

• Sharing tutorials 

If your team is newly working on a remote work pattern, you need to be more concerned about their learning outcomes. Besides having virtual sessions, explore tutorial videos on how to work remotely or for specific task performance. Share tutorial videos with them. But make sure you have watched the videos before sharing. Check the content of the videos you are going to share because the contents may vary or sometimes prove disgusting for your team.

YouTube is loaded abundantly with tutorials; almost all are different, find the best one to share with your team members.

• Exemplary data management 

Another technique to train your team is to create an example before assigning a task. Examples are the indication of right putting the ladder on the right wall, which means preparing your team for choosing the right tools, documents, or software whatever as per the nature of the task. Make a word document, or slides on MS Powerpoint to convey your message and method to start the work in the right direction. Otherwise, you will lose collaboration and may face wastage of time, money, and the energy of your team members. In such cases, you will never be appreciated by your team and boss. 

• Better communication 

By using technology, make good team relations by having good communication with your team members by making voice calls, video calls, or text messages or generating Emails. If you think it is not possible to communicate with all team members every day, you can divide them into groups and communicate with a single group in a day and then with the next group. 

Ask them to share their problems, no matter they are work-related or personal means you should promote empathic listening. By doing so, you will win the trust of your team and they will prefer to share the problems rather than wasting their time finding the solutions lonely. 

2. Do not forget your goals

Even if you are working remotely, you should make some goals and define some strategies to achieve them. Goals are not set to forget them after some time, especially when you are doing a professional duty, you are supposed to set your goal and always remember it. Things you only think are just the part of your imaginations and memory that can be lost in the crowd of other thoughts. If you do not want to forget your goals, you should follow some instructions such as

• Keep a written reminder 

The written things are not easy to forget as they pass through your fingers, your eyes, and your imaginations, they are easy to remember. Therefore, it is better to write your goals on paper and paste them over the wall of your workplace at home or any other place where you are mostly used to work. This will keep you reminding the strategies you wrote for achieving your goals. These written goals and a summary of defined strategies are called mission statements that everyone must have.

• Find an accountability partner

After taking a paper reminder, you should also choose an accountability partner who keeps you asking about the tasks you were going to perform this weak and make you realize where you are standing on completion of the defined task of the week. An accountability partner is a human reminder who not only keeps keeping alarming you about your performance but also suggests better options to deal with the things you are not getting and they are creating flaws in your work.

3. Follow deadlines 

The third most important thing you should do to get fruitful results of the remote working pattern follows the deadlines for the completion of specific tasks. No doubt in remote working, you are not working in front of your boss but he is looking at your activities and your task completion status as well. So, do be so lazy and irresponsible about your duties and make sure to meet deadlines.

Sometimes, unfortunately, due to some health problem or some other serious problem, if you are not able to meet the deadline, it is better to inform instead of losing trust. 

4. Prove your boss you are working

The owner of the company or organization for whom you are doing paid task is not looing you what you are doing in different mean times, but he will be looking at the record of your work, suppose if you are doing a remote job of selling products, the owner demands proof. You should have evidence of the performance of that particular like screenshots of the media posts you have posted on targeted social media apps, groups, or website of the company. 

If you are honestly working, you do not speak, it does your work. Do not leave track of your work, be energetic during duty hours and give your hundred percent to sustain your remote working. 

5. Maintain a record of your activities and evidence

You should have knowledge of MS Excel and MS world to maintain the record of your task performance. Make folders or sheets for the weeks and enter prove of the work you have done. Sometimes, you face some rumors about you that may affect your reputation in front of your boss, or if someone does it in jealousy or to let you down, you should have proof to defend your position by showing it. 

You can use pictures with date and day for a particular task of the day or week, or you may have a written proof that you can maintain in your record for your defense. 

6. Have a computer and strong network to access the internet 

The most important things that everyone should have while doing remote work are

• A laptop or a Personal computer

As you are working from home, not in the office, you should have a laptop or a computer for performing your task. Anything you want to do either it is in text, image, video, document, or file form, you need a computer to create it officially. So, be sure you have your personal laptop to operate and work from home.

• A strong network to access the internet

If you have created a word document or edited video or image and you want to share it with your team or boss or you need to post it as a professional message how can you do it without an internet connection? Yeah, you need a strong internet connection for doing remote work smoothly from home. You can use a cable net, Evo, or Wi-Fi, it is up to you.

So, these were some steps to follow for Working Remotely. A complete Guide.

How remote work is advantageous?

People who are working remotely are of the view, they are enjoying this work more than doing work in offices, far from their families and using different transport to reach the offices. It is not taken as a positive way of working by the employees only but the employers are also appreciating and preferring to hire remote working staff for their companies. 

There are several reasons behind hiring the remotely working staff, some of which are elaborated here.

1. To meet critical situations

As I have discussed above the havoc of Covid-19 all around the world was an unexpected disaster that was not accepted by the people and it created a pathetic condition in each country without taking into count either it is developed or not, everyone was passing through a panic situation. We had to stay at home for days, weeks, and then for months. All industries were closed and import-export was affected badly. 

But after the passage of time, even now we are passing through the third and most crucial layer of Covid-19 yet, but we are not panic we know what we need to do. Almost all companies and organizations have put their business on remotely working either their half of the staff is observing such pattern or all. People by working remotely are performing their contributions and earning their livelihood or the investors are investing in the business and getting equal or more output as they were getting in the physical office running.

Now, no matter what the circumstances are, the work just goes on by adopting an effective and timely way of working remotely. You can also convert your business into a remote business by adopting any type mentioned above to beat these pathetic conditions during the lockdown.

2. To reduce the expenses 

When the majority of the employees are working from home, the companies do not need to spend money on furniture, paying bills, using electricity or generators, providing each employee a computer or a laptop to work on. The employees are managing with their personal tools, laptops, computers, and internet connection.

This property of working remotely is more beneficial for the company as it can avoid the extra expenses it was spending earlier to facilitate the employees and run the office. Some researchers say that some companies have removed their physical offices and have transformed into an online company and hiring employees who have the potential to work remotely.

Suppose a company had about 300 employees on different designation, but after transforming it into working remotely pattern, it sends its 250 employees on remote work or working from. This company has shortened its expenses on providing the employees with their personal workplace with a computer, a tube light, an air conditioner in the room, and many other electrical appliances that were in use are free now. 

3. For excessive talent hunt

If a company is promoting remote work, it has more chances to hunt more talent on large scale. When hiring for an office job, the locations matter a lot for joining. Sometimes, you find a very talented person by posting an ad but after the interview when he/she rejects your proposal just because of the location, you feel bad about losing that talented person. But if you are asking that particular person to work for your company remotely instead of joining your office, you will not be at loss. Now, the traditional working system is not working 100% at all, you need to transform your business into an online business not as a whole but at least 50 percent. 

4. For more productivity 

Another advantage of working remotely is more productivity. A market study revealed that there has a prominent increase in productivity shown during the last lockdown that was about 4.4%. The companies if prefer remote work, there are more likely chances to get talented and devoted employees from far places who cannot join you at the office due to lockdown or due to more distance. They can contribute to bringing more profit for your company by putting their efforts and wisely suggestion to compete for the market.

5. For ecological sustainability 

Another study has declared a very clear impact of working remotely that is ecological sustainability. If the majority of people are working for home, not using their personal vehicles, it is leading to a huge benefit regarding the ecological sustainability such as 

• There is less consumption of fuel
• Low quantity of air pollution leading to healthy pure air quality
• Low use of electricity leading to low demand for electrical power.
  

These points show the importance of Working Remotely. A complete Guide and why you should follow it.

Conclusion 

Working remotely is becoming popular among the people due to its numerous advantages and its ability to beat the pathetic circumstances due to the pandemic of Covid-19. Working Remotely. A complete Guide is given above to follow and get the results.