The attraction of employees towards remote work is on the rise. Workers value versatility, and employers can save millions on operational costs. If your employees work from home, that means no office to rent, no more electric bills to power your office equipment, and no bills for meals. It can open up new roads of online business.
The benefits of a remote business are not hard to see, but how precisely do you do it? For startups and new companies, it’s reasonably simple to establish yourself as an exclusive digital brand, but what about companies that have been working from an office for years or even decades? How can you develop a remote work structure?
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Can you really make your business go remote?
Not all businesses are capable of remote operation. This can be due to their customer base and/or the products or services offered. Companies considering a move to remote operations are required to conduct an analysis of their brand and discover whether it is actually beneficial, or even realistic.
Considerations to include:
- Growth opportunities.
- Efficiency and practicalities.
- Consumer satisfaction.
- Investment.
Consider your transitional strategy
If you consider transitioning to remote working will be a robust and suitable option for your business, the next step is to craft a plan for launching your latest operational practices.
- Identify your goals: Identity what your business goals for going remote are? Adaptable working, reductions in costs, increased range of clients, and greater access to talent are all standard drivers.
- How will you accomplish those goals?: Learn how you will use remote working to accomplish the goals you’ve set. For example, if you would like to make working hours more flexible, look at how you can use remote operations to achieve this without affecting your service output.
- Timeframes and deadlines: Set more extended deadlines for establishing your remote business. Then set fixed timeline schedules for particular steps of the transition within the deadlines. If your deadline for total remote working is six months, create schedules for goal setting, updating of processes, closure of leases, employee training, and other essential aspects to be completed before this.
- Announcement: Notify employees and clients of the change. Permit enough time for questions and decisions to be made. Few clients and employees might be against the transitional strategy. They must be provided time to adjust and change or to move away from your business, enabling you to fill gaps now. This will be profitable for both them and your business. During an essential time like the transition to remote work, you don’t want to be down on staff or acquiring new customers.
Related: Keep your small business afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic
Develop your software platforms
Remote work presents several challenges. The nature of remote work structure means there is a distinct disconnect between personnel, their colleagues, and your clients. Yet, these disconnects needn’t be a problem – or, no disconnects at all.
Softwares exist to maintain all aspects of remote work structure, incorporating everything already in place in your everyday workplace headquarters.
- Industry-specific software.
- Task management.
- Time management
- Work connectivity.
- Client and team communication.
Test your transitional strategy
Once you’ve developed a strategy and are fully ready to establish yourself as a remote company, the final step before really committing to your new format is testing it.
Depending on your type of business, this will take several forms:
- If you have a massive list of employees and clients, split them up. Select a few employees and customers to continue operating under the current office-based business model while others are relocated to a remote work structure and methods. Evaluate success over a precisely determined period, be it weeks or months.
- For smaller businesses, instead of transitioning some people to the new process, make a switch to part-time remote work and monitor the diversity in processes.
If you find remote working to be a success, now is the time to make the absolute commitment.
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