Remote Working Model

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14 Jan 2024

Introduction

Long days of working in office environments seem to be a thing of the past for most sectors. Remote working will continue to take place in business life in 2022 and in the coming years. Knowing the positive and negative aspects of remote working, which will be at the heart of our professional careers, is an important point for both employees and employers to better prepare for the future.
The remote working system is the new model of working life. Both employees and managers need to be familiar with the subject. I am also a remote worker. So we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of remote working with you so that you can understand whether this working model is suitable for you.

Advantages of Remote Working

Increases Productivity

For Generation Z, the new faces of business life, the 9-5 working system is very foreign. This is because working from home has emerged as the dominant system and eliminates the rigidity of working from the office.
Working remotely increases productivity thanks to the flexible work schedule it offers. Not all people are the same, some are more productive in the early hours of the morning, while others are night owls. You are no longer condemned to work only from 9-5. If you are more productive at night, you can get things done even in the evening. If you can get things done before the deadline and add value to the company you work for, you are not bound to certain hours to work.
The attitude of your managers is also important for this. If your managers trust you and give you the flexibility you need, you can increase your productivity while working from home. In the new model, it is no longer so important at what time of the day an employee gets their work done. If you are a manager, remember that trusting your employees and giving them the flexibility they want is actually good for everyone. In addition, the benefits we'll talk about later in the article also indirectly help to increase productivity.

Avoiding Traffic

One of the worst aspects of working in a specific location is the unnecessary time you spend on the road. In metropolises like Istanbul, there are employees who spend up to 5 hours a day on the road.
The remote working model saves employees from this wasted time of life. The nightmares of sitting in Pendik and waking up at 05.00 for a shift that starts at 09.00 in Beylikdüzü end. In addition to being a waste of time, traffic also disrupted people's moods and lowered their energy.
With the remote working model, people who can work from anywhere can save both their time and energy.
Cost Reduction

Remote working is not only profitable in terms of time, but also in terms of cash. Employees had to spend time on the road to get to work. This led to travel costs. Examples of these costs include fuel costs if traveling by private car and travel fares if traveling by public transportation.
Employees going to the office also spent money on eating out. These costs no longer exist for those who work from home outside the office. Remote working saves costs not only for employees but also for companies. The costs of renting large offices, electricity and water costs, internet costs, and if employees are provided with transportation, the cost of shuttle services were a huge liability for companies. Teleworking cuts many costs, including high office costs.
The money saved can be used to motivate employees, increase the marketing budget or attract more talented employees. With this business model, you can grow business while saving time and cash.

Reduced Pressure to Perform

We all know how stressful it can be to work in an office and have managers standing over us. Watching from the window of his office whether we were getting things done or not, our manager could put pressure on employees and cause a decrease in performance. When working remotely, only the work that employees do is important. You are not in the same environment with a manager who is waiting on you or a senior manager who puts pressure on you. This reduces the stress on employees and enables them to work more efficiently.

Employees who are not necessarily expected to come to the office at 9 o'clock can focus on their work with a more relaxed mind. When an employee who needs to go to the office wakes up at 8.45 am, they may try to skip work, thinking that they will be late anyway, but someone working remotely has a longer time to come to them. Employees whose every move and every job is not scrutinized by their managers become more loyal to their companies and their productivity increases.

Disadvantages of Remote Work

Distractions at Home, Focus Problems

Working in a physical workplace made people feel that they were 'at work', even if they were not doing anything. Everyone who was there knew that they were there to do work and did not confuse it with other things. With the remote working model, our homes have become our workplaces, but there is a problem with this:
Our homes are not only our workplaces, they are also where we live. For those who lack self-discipline, waking up in the morning and convincing themselves to work in the same place can be quite a challenging process.

Loneliness

One of the biggest shortcomings of working remotely is not being able to catch the socialization that you can catch in offices. When we were working in the office, we were able to chat and spend time with our colleagues over coffee in between. Socializing filled our energy and filled our energy for the next work cycle. We were able to meet our social needs by spending time with our colleagues outside of work. When we work remotely, we are on our own.
We work alone and take breaks alone. This makes it difficult for us to make friends both during and after working hours and pushes us into loneliness. Especially among those who started working after the pandemic, there are even some who have never physically met their coworkers. It is also difficult to develop friendships with people we only see through video cameras. This is also a factor that reduces our productivity at work, as our social side is not sufficiently saturated.

Cyber Security Challenges

When I worked in the office, important company data was stored on company computers. This information never left the office and was kept safe by special security measures set up by the company. But now, employees can take their computer and do their work anywhere, and it is much more difficult to secure this computer than computers in the office. Computers or malware can be used to steal the information on them. This puts both the employee and the company in a difficult situation. In order to prevent these, both employees and companies need to be much more careful in this regard.