Some employers embrace remote work and offer their staff an option to work from home or work entirely remotely. Others are more reluctant to embrace a virtual workforce.
Choosing between a virtual vs remote workforce might seem complicated, but with the right management, it’s proven to be fruitful for various reasons.
Furthermore, numerous companies are benefiting from increased remote work productivity. Still, it’s not surprising some justifiable hesitations still exist among certain company leaders. These can be due to a combination of misconceptions, bad experiences, or simply managerial preference.
Whatever the cause of resistance, as we’ll see in a moment, the benefits of going remote are significant, and far outweigh the potential downsides. And the skills for working remotely can be learned quickly by most employees. Read on below to find out why you need to work with a virtual team in 2021.
1. Reduced Expenses
A major benefit of a virtual team is the act of minimizing the expenses.
This is perhaps the most obvious and the most significant benefit of a virtual team.
Working virtually eliminates office rent and maintenance expenses, utilities like internet connection and electricity, office electronics and furniture, and transport.
While most virtual or remote teams carry out their tasks away from the office, they’re responsible for most of these costs — helping you take advantage of reduced expenses.
Though, this isn’t to suggest remote employees burden all costs of doing business. Companies often provide stipends for critical remote infrastructure. But this still comes in well below the cost of managing an office.
You may also incur the cost of new remote management software that your staff requires to execute their daily tasks competently.
2. A Pool Of Global Talent
An alluring trait of a virtual workforce is that you’re not limited to a single source of talent.
Since your staff is not working in an office, you will not need them to be living within a limited proximity. You can source your staff from all over the world to build a truly global virtual team.
When you aren’t restricted to hiring employees living and operating in the same locality as you, you have a far deeper well from which to source talent.
By hiring from beyond borders, you may also be able to source more cost-effectively and compensate talent at a higher rate than they would get in their locality.
3. Easy To Scale Up
With your company’s expansion, you have to improve your operations. Enlarging your company by employing a larger workforce comes with plenty of other requirements, such as more desks, chairs and space.
When your staff is virtual, you won’t face these same issues. Remote workers take care of their work equipment, utilities, and environment.
Therefore, you can promptly hire the required number of workers without disrupting your current structures.
4. Around-the-Clock Availability
Since virtual workers are not location-limited, you can source them across the world, and thus, standard times differ.
Employing staff from different parts of the globe ensures your company’s 24/7 functionality if that’s an important function for your operations.
This around-the-clock available is especially valuable for customer-facing teams with customers across the globe.
5. Increased Employees Productivity
Since your employees have home offices, they will save the time they usually use while traveling. They can utilize the additional time to eat healthily, exercise more and even sleep longer, helping to escalate productivity.
Also, your employees will be more efficient as they use their most fruitful hours because there is no fixed working time.
In addition, you’ll have a happy workforce that is more content with their work. Consequently, increased productivity can translate into a rise in profits.
6. Better Work-life Balance
Your employees are more content when working from home as they can uphold a more balanced lifestyle by working in such an atmosphere.
When working hours are not fixed and there are no daily commutes, your employees can better control their lives as they desire.
Therefore, they can have enough time with family members, maintain a healthy lifestyle, and utilize their free time on what they love most.
Conclusively, a balanced lifestyle will eventually result in more yields due to staff contentment.
7. More Relevant Meetings
Conducting meetings with in-office teams is very easy, but it might not be the best thing for your business productivity.
Unnecessary meetings consume your employees’ precious time and can deplete remote team productivity. Your employees can easily find themselves spending too much time in meetings instead of on assigned tasks.
Having a virtual team can help counter this problem. When team members are dispersed across the world, your team must consider everyone’s availability when planning to meet. In short, it makes them more conscious to only hold meetings when absolutely unavoidable.
8. Fewer Interruptions
Remote working allows your employees to focus on the job at hand without the distractions of socializing and office talk.
While social interactions are important and have serendipitous value, they can often do more harm to productivity than good.
Therefore, they will have the ability to get into the zone and work faster to complete the tasks at hand.
9. Disaster Preparedness
As we’ve all learned in recent times, a single disaster can throw organizations into chaos.
A virtual team can help make your team prepare if disaster strikes. In times of crisis, staff that is non-essential onsite can effortlessly work from home or other non-fixed systems to minimize disruption for your team.
You can utilize joint programs like communications and online meeting software in such a case. Also, a remote monitoring software is essential when tracking remote employees.
A temporary work arrangement will aid in ensuring your business continues to run normally and keep employees protected.
10. Higher Employee Retention Rate
Employing a remote team comes with significant benefits such as increased employee rate of retention.
With a remote team, you’ll not lose your staff in case of a re-location. Remotely working is also convenient during pregnancy and early motherhood. They also have more flexibility, which is an essential requirement.
Consequently, you can attract and retain better employees in your company by offering them the freedom and flexibility of remote work.
Conclusion
It is important to note that the virtual model of working is beneficial to both the employee and the company.
It gives your employees satisfaction, which increases their productivity and boosts your company’s profits, which is the main goal.
The working world today is more remote than ever. And, all signs indicate that working trends will continue in this direction. With the reasons above, it’s easy to see why.