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Just a few months ago, remote work may have seemed out of reach for many industries. Some people would even classify remote work as a phenomenon. However, these days, remote work seems to be the way many people will work in the future.

Research has shown that about 25% of people in the United States reported that they have performed some of their work remotely in the past. With the spread of the coronavirus, that number has definitely increased. In a recent survey by a London-based leadership summit, just under 35% of business leaders said that more than half of their staff will be working remotely by the end of 2020. This is a clear indication that remote work has become a global phenomenon.

This is the reason why many people today are wondering what caused such a phenomenon, what are its effects, and how can they make it work.

What has caused such a spike in remote work?

The answer to this question is quite obvious – coronavirus. If it was not for the global COVID-19 outbreak, for many people, remote work would be just a pipe dream. But since the coronavirus has forced many people to change the way they work and go home, remote work became a new reality.

At the forefront of this phenomenon were, as you likely expected, tech companies. Big tech giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter, were among the first ones that either recommended or even demanded that their workforce starts working from home. While remote work has been gaining popularity in the tech industry for quite some time, the COVID-19 outbreak pushed remote work to the forefront.

What are the effects of remote work?

There is a reason why tech companies decided to operate remotely, as benefits of remote work can be huge—both for the company and for the employees.

For companies, remote work means saving huge amounts of money on real estate and a more productive and efficient workforce. For employees that are working remotely, there is no more commute, their costs for business attire and eating outside are almost nonexistent, and for most people, remote work can help them to better focus on the work.

How can we make sure that remote work... works?

While the benefits of remote work are huge, working remotely is not easy. For most companies that have remote staff, having the right procedures, policies, and workflows in place is a necessity. Many remote companies also rely on employee monitoring software to help them have a better overview of what their employees are doing at work.

While a certain degree of trust when working remotely has to exist, just taking someone's word is not enough. That is why many remote and in-office companies used to use employee monitoring software to have proof of work and ensure that their employees are actually doing the work they are being paid to do. These days, there are far better and more modern alternatives to such invasive software of the past. Many companies nowadays use workforce productivity software such as Workpuls to analyze, optimize and improve their employees’ productivity.

Conclusion

Is remote work the future? Yes. Is it the future for all businesses? Definitely not. Even though in today's tech-heavy world, a lot of things can be done online and with computers, many people still have to do work outside of their homes or the local cafe. For all those people, which still make up the majority of people, working remotely is not a viable option.

However, for everyone else, remote work is here to stay, as the benefits both for the employees and the companies are too good to miss out. Just take a look at what some of the top tech companies are doing—Shopify, Square, Twitter, and Facebook are all planning on making remote work a permanent option for some or even all of their employees. And this is probably the best reason why remote work is the future of work.