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Working from home has become the new normal of most organizations and while it comes with many advantages, it is not free of its challenges. They may often be overlooked but eventually could pose a risk to the organization if not carefully identified and handled. We take a look at some of the challenges that come with remote work.
1. Poor and blurred work-life balance.
Essentially we do not carry work home but when the office is moved to the house it could be tempting to overwork and forget to unplug and take necessary breaks. It could also lead to bad habits like lack of exercise, overindulging, and poor feeding habits as one may not have set out proper meal breaks for themselves.
To manage this it is essential to have set breaks to unplug and discipline to work within the required timelines say from 8 am to 5 pm just as you would in the office. Create a schedule for other activities such as exercise in your time.
2. Feelings of isolation.
Humans are social beings with an inherent desire to interact with other people. Long periods of isolation and being set apart could lead to one feeling lonely and eventually if not handled well, could lead to stress and more severely, depression.
A solution to this is, Create social platforms to meet with workmates such as virtual meetings, team building activities, and a blended remote work program where after some time the employee goes to the office for a short period to break the monotony of working purely from home. This will also take personal initiative to engage in social activities such as family gatherings and meeting up regularly with friends.
3. Micromanagement
Working from home has led to increased levels of mistrust between managers and their employees. This is indicated by the many monitoring practices implemented like virtual monitored frequent reporting and check is, More than usual meetings, and insistence on live cams during meetings to mention but a few.
This can easily be curbed through clear channels of communication. Implementation of necessary but non-intrusive monitoring measures that do not make the employees feel as if the managers are too overbearing micro-managing them.
4. Difficultly solving technical challenges.
Employees are often faced with technical challenges among them new software that they may not have previously worked with or been inducted sufficiently to use, system downtimes that they may not know how to troubleshoot and solve, and most common to many, poor internet connectivity.
The solution to this is to invest in a good internet service provider that is reliable and has few occurrences of downtimes. Employees also need constant capacity building and internal training to handle system challenges and adaptability to new software and processes introduced along the way.
5. Increased cyber security risks
With more people working out of the office, threats to cyber security also increase as employees are not exposed to different internet connections as opposed to secured office internet connectivity. This thus means that fraudsters can access the employees easily whether through phishing, smishing, or other fraudulent practices in the guess of their managers, service providers, or even company IT support.
To counter this, employees need constant training on cyber security measures and how to handle threats, and in extreme cases how to deal with a cyber-attack. They also need to be sensitized to the need for secure home internet connections to reduce the risks of cyber-attacks.
6. Difficult to manage projects.
It could be a daunting task to manage a project with team members in different locations. This is especially a challenge in cases where field visits and frequent meetings have to be held for progress monitoring and evaluation.
However, there are virtual project management tools the company could adopt in place of the physical frequent progress evaluation meetings to help them monitor the projects.
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