In today’s world, remote work is undoubtedly on the rise. For a lot of firms across the globe, working from home has become a real possibility. Finding the right work-life balance has become a lot easier while working from home. It doesn’t matter anymore if your employee works from another country, or from a nearby co-working space. When workers rely heavily on computers, software tools, and agile development practices, there is no reason to physically go and sit on desks in offices. But despite how sweet remote working looks, it has got challenges of its own. And then there is one major question - Does remote work increase productivity, actually? Or is it just a fiction?
The Shape of Work Amid the COVID-19 Era
March 2020 - begins the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire world came to a halt. With no action plans on hand, the situation turned out to be haphazard for everyone and that’s when ‘work from home (WFH)’ or ‘remote working’ became a buzzword in the corporate world. In fact, 88% of the organizations, worldwide, made it mandatory or encouraged their employees to work from home after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. For software firms, and other sectors for whom work was possible by sitting in front of screens, the situation didn’t disturb much. But for a multitude of industries wherein physical tasks were required, it was a challenging time.
Soon, with a lot of brainstorming involved, solutions came out to make remote working possible and today the situation is well in control. Work is something you do, and not somewhere you go, and hence, one’s professional success or productivity shouldn’t really be dependent on a particular location. And now when the world says that productivity has improved while working from home, aren’t we signifying that it’s independent of the location?
Are Remote Workers More Productive?
Yes and No! Every other report, survey, or study out there will tell you a different story and it’s difficult to land on a final answer. Amidst the global pandemic and challenging situations, employees are reporting greater productivity and higher job satisfaction. On the contrary, the pandemic has left the employees feeling disgruntled and pathetic, negatively affecting their productivity and work-life balance. Forbes says - “The New Normal isn’t Remote Work. It’s Better.” To summarize, it’s about providing better resources, entrusting, and building digital fluency for employees, and that all together is going to have either a positive or negative impact on the overall productivity.
The Concept of Hybrid Work and Productivity
A Hybrid WFH Model refers to one wherein some of the employees are allowed to work remotely, while others have to work on-premises. This structure allows you to split in-office work hours between teams or departments to enhance productivity, and in turn, accelerate the growth of your business. For example, your marketing team can work remotely and attend meetings over mobile tools, while the sales team can carry out their operations within the in-office workspace.
You can follow a number of variations while considering a hybrid model for your organization.
- Remote-First
The organization has to act like a fully remote organization with employees working remotely across different time zones and relying on online communication. But the organization cannot provide the same flexibility to other employees whose physical presence is needed and plays a crucial role in operations.
- Office-Occasional
In this case, the employees come to the office a few times a week and carry out the operations. The workforce has to be local rather than distributed, as the employees have to come to the office occasionally. Since your entire workforce may or may not be present at the same place simultaneously, a digital transformation would be important.
- Office-First, Remote Allowed
The employees are allowed to work from home, but are designated to use the office as a primary space for working. The organization has a remote work policy for the employees. The major drawback in the model is that the employees working from home get limited opportunities and often fail to establish a closer relationship with the leadership team working in the office. This might lead to reduced employee productivity, engagement, and retention.
As per a recent report from Accenture, 83% of the workers prefer a hybrid work model.
So, the first step you need to take is to spend time thinking if your business can adjust and adapt to a new working model. You need to create policies and a digital backbone that will benefit both remote working and in-house working employees. Make sure you maintain a positive work environment and no employee feels like a cold shoulder being given to them.
Why Incorporate SaaS Tools into Your Organization?
In today’s era of sophisticated tech innovations and fast-paced business models, SaaS tools are no more optional but are the need of the hour. And here are some of the reasons why you need to incorporate SaaS tools into your organization:
- SaaS are less expensive and allows significant savings, especially by avoiding the significant costs of installation or maintenance of hardware,
- The scalability of these tools plays a crucial role in strategic planning and offers a variety of options even while working remotely as everything is being delivered over the cloud.
- SaaS tools have better adaptability and can be easily deployed and managed from remote locations.
- They facilitate a quick and efficient transition to the digital space as the WFH model presents multiple challenges in terms of communication and productivity.
How to improve the management of this growing ecosystem of SaaS applications?
SaaS Management Platforms can help you in many ways; not least of which is by allowing you to discover, optimize and plan the entire management of this SaaS tools. If you're still not convinced, here's a short summary of the different topics it covers:
- Automatically discover each deployed application and its administrator
- Discover the real usage of the applications
- Track your contracts and their renewals
- Control costs and optimize investments
- Ensure the right level of security of the tools
You can't define the future of the pandemic, but your business is certainly in your hands. The ultimate solution is to stay a few steps ahead and integrate the right SaaS tools for your organization's growth. Looking for simple but effective solutions? Contact Najar who can help you implement the right tools needed for your development. Its cloud-based platform makes managing SaaS tools frictionless and helps you build a more efficient information system.
