The pandemic forced a large percentage of the global economy to work from home due to a variety of restrictions. It’s been roughly a year since the pandemic and many employees are still working from home. In fact, remote work is on the rise and many companies have integrated it into their work culture. With technologies like Zoom and Microsoft Teams, the majority of work that previously needed face to face meetings can be done with video conferencing.
It’s estimated that 41% of American workers are still working from home in some capacity. A Gartner survey found that 80% of executives plan to allow employees to work from home whether partially or completely after the pandemic. Contrary to popular belief, executives are embracing remote work. This is because they can extend their talent pool from their local offices to the entire world. Additionally, companies that embrace remote work save significant capital on helping employees relocate and paying various fees.
Work From Home Concerns For Employees
Although work from home sounds like a dream, employees have to be wary of several factors that can threaten their job security. Some of these factors include:
Productivity standard: Employers expect employees to be just as productive as they were when they were in the office, if not more. This can be very difficult with a multitude of distractions occurring when working from home. Since many children have not returned to school, employees that are working from home will have to take care of children while maintaining high productivity levels.
Competition: It’s easy to have job security when there’s not a lot of people in your area who are as qualified as you. When you work from home, you will be compared to the global remote workforce. There are thousands of remote workers who will be as qualified as you and will take a fraction of your salary due to their cost of living. Employees will have to make themselves invaluable to their company to keep a long-term position.
Work From Home Concerns For Employers
Cybersecurity: Cybersecurity is one of the main concerns for employers with remote workers. Previously, companies had their work documents protected with secured networks, firewalls and other cybersecurity protocols. With employees working from home, there’s an increased risk for breaches, malware and other attacks from hackers. It’s important to set cybersecurity guidelines for all remote workers to prevent breaches.
Navigating legal work: Prior to remote work, companies had one or a few headquarters where the majority of the workforce was located. This made it easy to do taxes, hiring, complying to local laws and more. With remote work, your company will likely have a global workforce. This means that in order to stay in business, your company will have to have a more complex legal and regulatory operation. It’s important to do research prior to hiring employees from a specific state or country.
To learn more about how you can navigate working from home, talk to an expert here.
