Working remotely isn’t simply a trend businesses can ignore. In fact, the total number of remote workers is on the rise.
In 2016, Gallup released the State of the American Workplace. The report was created to help business owners understand the changes in today’s workforce and learn how they can boost employee retention, engagement and performance. In this report, 43 percent of workers were shown to have worked remotely in some capacity. This was up from 39 percent in 2012.
By 2020, studies estimate the number of remote workers could rise to 50 percent.
It’s not just the percentage of employees working remotely that has increased. Employees who work offsite are spending more of their time doing so. In 2012, 24 percent of remote employees were spending 80 percent or more of their time working remotely. In 2016, 31 percent of workers were doing the same.
As the landscape of the modern workplace continues to change, companies are being forced to adapt. It’s now up to employers to adjust to fit the needs of their employees. Not doing so can be detrimental to a business, negatively impacting everything from recruitment to employee moral to general productivity.
But while more and more companies realize the overall benefits of allowing employees to work remotely, having a staff that is almost always out of the office can lead to issues that need to be addressed.
Lack of communication
Traditional employees can easily communicate with each other, as most of the time your coworker will be just down the hall or in the adjacent office. But remote workers don’t have this luxury and must instead rely on technology to communicate. Due to this, remote workers can oftentimes feel left out of out of the loop when it comes to knowing the latest update to an ongoing project or hearing about the upcoming company event. This can quickly lead to disconnect between teammates.
Having access to Kerauno’s suite of communication tools helps alleviate this disconnect. With Chat+, office employees can quickly pass along updates to remote workers to keep them in the loop. Whether the update is about an altered due date or a change to the time of a scheduled video conference, Kerauno quickly bridges the communication gap between traditional and remote workers.
Out-of-reach employees
Because remote employees aren’t in the office, they are not tied down to a specific desk. This change of scenery can do wonders to re-energize the brain and make tackling the rest of the workday more manageable. However, this also means the standard desk phone is left behind. Because of this, getting in touch with an employee can become difficult.
Using Kerauno, an employee isn’t confined to working from a set location. The cloud-based platform gives an employee the ability to take their office with them wherever they go and enables them to connect to the device of their choosing. For those who like to travel light to their favorite workspace destination, Kerauno is equipped to route inbound calls to an employee’s cell phone, helping to maintain corporate branding. Additionally, the Bolt softphone keeps employees connected via voice, video and integrated chat, making it easy to be in two places at once.
Issues with collaboration
Effective collaboration can become difficult when your team is spread out across a number of different locations. Without the aid of technology, collaboration between employees in real time becomes nearly impossible, causing inefficiencies that can lead to negative outcomes and missed opportunities for your business.
Kerauno enables teams to work together seamlessly without having to keep tabs on hundreds of other software applications. Built-in conference bridges supporting up to 20 callers, company-wide and private collaborative chat channels, and third-party software integrations make collaboration more convenient and efficient for remote employees.
