Gone are the days of waking up at five in the morning, commuting over twenty miles to the office, and working all day just to come home and repeat the cycle the next day. As everyone knows from the onset of Covid-19 until now, one of the most prominent images for work has become the very home in which we live. In fact, by 2025, it is estimated that roughly 20% of employees will work 100% remotely due to its widespread convenience and popularity. The evolution of technology has made this possible and even preferable among employees of many different work environments. Of course, not everyone’s job allows them to work from home, but for those who can, remote work continues to hold a lasting place in society.
Because of rapid advances in technology, work culture has shifted its paradigm from the traditional office space to the “home office”. Technology has opened the doors for people to work from anywhere, even coffee shops, thanks to virtual communication, collaboration, and work attendance from across the globe. Platforms such as Zoom, Google Chat, and other collaborative software allow people to meet with one another, send messages, and work together on projects from anywhere. However, a global pandemic was never the advent of remote work, only a major increase in its global prominence. Remote work has actually been around since the end of the 20th century, particularly when computers found their way into society and continued to grow technologically and in popularity. To understand how remote work has evolved into its modern landscape, we must time travel to the 1990s and get closer proximity to the early roots of working from home.
Timeline of Remote Work
As the 20th century had come to a close, the 1990s observed a path forward that would modernize the world in its entirety. For many people, it was a time of major change and evolution. The decade witnessed significant advances in technology, including rechargeable batteries, the World Wide Web, and the relentless growth of cell phones, television, and computers. The internet was born, and a few years after, Wi-Fi became a means for people to network while browsing the internet, using radio waves as the source of connection. These innovations led to societal acceptance, embracing a unique way of performing work and responsibilities.
As computer technology continued to develop throughout the 2000s, remote work became a lot more prevalent, allowing all federal employees to use telecommunication if necessary, though it was still not as favorable. As employees became more adept at working from home, companies began establishing policies for remote work that aligned with their practices. After nearly a decade of gaining traction, roughly 70% of people across the globe worked remotely at least once a week by 2018.
Then, Covid-19 changed everything. Remote work became a massive requirement in order to keep people safe, healthy, and at least somewhat employed. Thankfully, at the time of the pandemic, technology had been making waves around the world for decades and had ultimately proved itself ready to take on this world-changing phenomenon. Thus, technology has fundamentally transformed the landscape of remote work, bringing both opportunities and challenges.
Benefits of Technology on Remote Work
The benefits that technology brings to the table may certainly outweigh most of its challenges, as the concept of remote work is here to stay, in future terms. As mentioned, there are many examples of online platforms (Zoom, being one) that enhance the collaborative and communicative practices of companies that operate remotely. Video conferences, instant messaging, virtual collaboration tools, and project management software are all made possible by innovations in technology platforms. Not only do they provide convenience for employees, but they increase productivity during the workday because everything is accessible at the click of a button. Additionally, remote work allows for a more flexible schedule, enabling adult employees to accomplish other tasks on their to-do lists that have little to do with work. Whatever the case, remote work creates a more sustainable work-life balance, ensuring that when it is time to end a Zoom call, it is time to shut the laptop as well.
Another reason why remote work is a preference of many companies is because it is typically more cost-effective, inevitably drawing attention from companies looking to improve economically. They can save money by eliminating the cost of an office building and minimizing the time it takes to commute. In this way, fewer commuters on the road translates to reduced environmental impact, creating a positive change on a local and global scale. And, from a global standpoint, companies will have better access to respective talent in different areas of the world. This leads to higher access to classified information, theoretically, as well as resources from all over. Therefore, the role of a virtual workspace in expanding a company’s market and talent pool will help to maximize the company’s full earning potential.
Remote Work Culture and Employee Engagement
Despite these advantages, people may still ask: what about socializing? How do employees stay engaged when they are looking at a screen all day? How are they able to build or maintain a positive lifestyle when their entire days are spent inside? These are all valid concerns that make up a few of the challenges to remote work. To counteract disengagement and a potentially arduous work environment, companies rely on technology yet again to increase engagement and maintain positive relationships and morale. While the remote work setting remains virtual, there are plenty of opportunities for employees to engage with one another, socialize, and enjoy themselves online.
Virtual communication tools such as video conferences permit general remote team-building activities, which are effective ways for employees to get to know one another beyond the scope of their screens or work projects. Companies also find ways to compensate for the lack of physical interaction by resembling an in-person atmosphere as much as possible. This is done through common workplace affairs such as employee recognition, virtual team activities, remote professional development, and surveys.
Challenges in Remote Work Settings
Other challenges that remote workers face are primarily vulnerabilities of security. With all matters online, companies inevitably expose themselves to the harmful side of the web, comprising hackers, cyber threats, and data breaches. While employees still need secure access to data and other modes of intellectual property, granting them access while on their personal devices poses a risk to data privacy and sensitive information. At any point, an employee’s endpoint security could endanger a company’s privacy, as the employee’s home security differs from that of the company’s networks.
This is why companies must establish remote work policies regarding the use of their own networks, data, and intellectual property; otherwise, the lines of trust may get blurred over time, creating even more instability within the company’s security measures. All in all, the objective should be to avoid data loss by all means possible. So, higher-ups should only send projects and passwords or grant access to specific employees who they entrust to work on them.
The Future: Strategies to Make Remote Work Secure and Efficient
To enhance security and efficiency, remote jobs should utilize strategies that establish clearly defined remote work policies, implement secure remote access technologies, and provide general remote work security training. A tool such as cloud computing has made this quick and easy, offering innovative computing services of storage, databases, networking, software, intelligence, and analytics.
In a modern technical world, there are now many business applications acting as supplements to a company’s business operations, both internally and externally. These include software that is efficient and assistive in enhancing productivity, executing assignments accurately, or managing interactions with consumers (i.e., enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM)).
Cloudbrink is another example of a resource that connects employees working within a remote or hybrid format, delivering a readily available, office-like experience so that their work at home only differs slightly from their work in the office. Essentially, it allows its users to connect to the company’s applications for more efficient collaboration and performance.
Because the remote work setting is constantly in renovation, most companies have only arrived at the surface of what lies beneath, being a consistent mode of work that seems to be here to stay. The future of remote work will likely see the continuous development of virtual platforms that enhance the experience for all employees. As the pandemic approaches its five-year mark, many companies are still recovering, so remote work is still a more economical route. However, the hybrid model of work, which allows for time both at home and in the office, seems to be the next stage, as businesses around the globe find advantages in either and want to continue exploring what works best. Time will tell, especially with how remote work has become the rock on which many companies have leaned. Yet, the future is a mystery, leaving space only for prediction at this point and not certainty.
