Remote Working During the Global Pandemic Situation

  

The COVID-19 global health emergency has evidently caused severe destructive effects on the global economy. Businesses and governments throughout the globe are constantly attempting to overcome the challenges faced by the pandemic to minimize economic downturn and avoid total economic collapse. With lockdowns, curfews, the working from home culture became a norm on a global scale. This approach promotes good health and security of employees in organizations that dose their business in the Information Technology sector.

In an IT sector organization, human resources are arguably the one of most important departments in the business. But modern workforce environments have created lots of HR issues and inefficiencies. More specifically, companies are having trouble overcoming the remote employee challenges of HR.

Models of Remote Work

There are many ways an organization can customize a virtual workforce. Featured here are the six primary remote work models to consider when deciding which workplace type will be most effective for your organization.

1) Fully Remote – Asynchronous

In a fully remote work model, an organization does not have an office. Staff might occasionally get together for meetups and retreats, but not at any permanent location. Everyone works remotely. At an asynchronous, fully remote organization, employees can live (conceivably) anywhere in the world; their communication and work are independent of time constraints. Their time zones don’t matter because the organization relies on asynchronous communication to keep work moving forward. Work could theoretically go on around the clock if employees live in multiple time zones around the world.

2) Fully Remote – Synchronous

Fully remote organization, employees must operate within core working hours though out the organization. This approach is more practical for timely communication, meeting scheduling, and member service if members live in the same time zones. This approach puts a higher emphasis on real-time interaction than the previously discussed approach.

3) Hybrid

In the hybrid remote model, part of the employees work in the office almost all of the time, and another group works remotely nearly all of the time. Organization management decides where employees are to work or provides the employees the options of choosing their desired workplace.

4) Partially Remote Work

In this approach everyone is required to be present at office for fixed number of days filling a certain capacity of work force present at the office. Commonly this is done in roster based approach. (Ex: a member of a particular team is required to be at office during the first week of the month after that until the next cycle he/she can work remotly.)

5) Remote-First Work

In this approach employees spend the majority of their time working remotely while coming to office for occasional meetings or other operational needs. Mostly this is practised for those who need access to special equipment or meeting rooms based on the nature of their task.

6) Office-First Work

In the Office-First work model. emoplyee are expected to treat their primary office location as their work place the and working remotely is an option provided to the organisation employees by approval of there department heads. As a common practise in this approach employees are expected to spend a minimum number of days or hours at the office premises doing their assigned tasks. 

An overview of different perspective can be identified as below, both from HR departments perspective and Employee perspective.

Challenges Faced by HR Departments

1. Employee Engagement
2. Remote Workforce Communication
3. Attracting and Retaining Talent
4. Providing Employee Self-Service
5. Poor Accessibility
6. Training and Development

Challenges of Remote Working for Employees

1. Managing Your Own Schedule & Time
2. Blurred Line Between Personal & Professional Life
3. Distractions
4. Reduced Supervision & Direction
5. Communication & Coordination Challenges
6. Unclear Performance Metrics
7. Social Isolation

Reference

How People and Companies Feel About Working Remotely - Visual Capitalist (no date).
Available at: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-people-and-companies-feel-about-working-remotely/ (Accessed: 20 May 2021).

8 Biggest HR Challenges for Remote Employees | BuildFire (no date). Available at: https://buildfire.com/hr-remote-employee-challenges/
(Accessed: 21 May 2021).