remote work Archives

How Do You Stay Connected with Coworkers While Working From Home?

by LizStevens | Jun 9, 2020 | Blog

How do you stay connected with coworkers while working from home? Effective communication while working from home is key to keeping the team on track.

Over 60 percent of employees have spent less time socializing with coworkers since they began working remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to research by Clutch.

It’s a problem because close work friendships can increase job satisfaction by 50 percent and encourage more creative, collaborative and innovative teamwork.

Nearly 70 percent of companies have hosted virtual events and 26 percent have given employees more access to communication technology to boost morale and give employees an opportunity to reconnect with one another.

How Do You Stay Connected with Coworkers While Working From Home?

Virtual Events

Virtual events give employees a brief break from work to come together as a team. The most common types of virtual events that employers are hosting include:

Professional development sessions (19 percent)
Happy hours (13 percent)
Activities and games (9 percent)
Meals (5 percent)

George Kuhn, the president of Drive Research, a market research firm, told Clutch about two ways his company is bringing coworkers together. During their “Social Coffee Hours” employees are welcome to make casual, office-type conversation in a shared video call while they work. Drive Research also hosts trivia and scavenger hunts as a fun, competitive alternative to the standard small talk of happy hours and virtual meals.

Shivbhadrasinh Gohil, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Meetanshi, a Magento development company, brings employees together with a daily activity called “Photos at 4” where employees respond to a prompt by sharing a photo (examples include favorite quarantine snack, unique household item and dream vacation).

Communication Technology

Many employers used communication technology long before COVID-19. Messenger platforms like Slack have streamlined communications about everything from company announcements to general work discussions since 2009. Task management tools such as Asana have kept teams on track to meet deadlines since 2008. Organizations have come to rely on tools like these to continue working as a team while working from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

Employers also need reliable technology to successfully host virtual events for employees. Zoom, a video conferencing application, saw it’s daily users jump from 10 million to more than 200 million in March when much of the U.S. was under orders to shelter-in-place.

When reviewing video conferencing platforms like Zoom, Google Hangouts and Microsoft Teams employers should consider how many participants will be attending virtual events, if there are any security concerns that need to be mitigated and what features are most important to them.

Coronavirus 2020: Effectively Working from Home

by LizStevens | Mar 25, 2020 | Blog

Coronavirus 2020: effectively working from home. A good remote work policy can help businesses maintain productivity while limiting the spread of COVID-19.

Businesses everywhere are implementing work from home policies to protect their employees but maintain business operations while federal, state and local governments impose various restrictions on public gatherings to limit the spread of the Coronavirus.

Establishing a successful work-from-home program is not easy. Communicating with employees to stay on track while minimizing panic about COVID-19 in the coming weeks and months is critical.

Establishing a Work from Home Policy

Organizations without a remote work plan in place can begin to assess their ability to do so in four steps:

Review Operations. Determine what processes and procedures can be completed digitally. Explore remote solutions for things like team meetings, data security and certain HR functions.
Evaluate Equipment. Make a list of the equipment employees need to get their work done and see what that looks like from home. Find out if employees already own laptops or computers and if they don’t, decide if loaning out office equipment will be worthwhile.
Plan Procedure. Figure out how the team will communicate with one another to stay on track to reach business goals. Think about how frequently group and individual check ins should occur and how to monitor remote work performance.
Communicate. Let employees know about your new work from home policy and ask for their feedback. Employees want to be involved in organizational change and they might be able to fill in any unforeseen gaps in the policy with their on-the-job knowledge.

A good remote work strategy is the best way to keep both your employees and your business safe during the Coronavirus outbreak and if you don’t have one yet, now is the time to put one together.

Coronavirus 2020: Effectively Working from Home

Here are three tips for effectively working from home during the Coronavirus outbreak:

Keep the Routine. It’s important in times like these to keep certain routines to minimize stress and maintain a sense of normalcy. It’ll also be easier to monitor remote work performance if employees are expected to be online during specific hours.
Open Communications. More than half of remote workers feel lonely, according to research by Porch. Checking in with colleagues, asking them how they’re doing with everything going on, sharing something you think they’ll find funny, asking about their families, talking about a news headline, all of these things can increase social connectedness and stave off the loneliness.
Encourage Work/Life Balance. Recommend that employees get ready for work like they would on any other day. Encourage them to designate a space for work and take breaks at regular times to get in the working mindset. It can be nice on occasion to work from bed in your pajamas, especially if you’re sick, but it’s not good for productivity or mental health to continue to do so for an extended period of time.

More on the Coronavirus and Work From Home Policies

How Will the Coronavirus Impact Your Business?

How Does Remote Working Work?

Coronavirus and Financial Stress: How Will Employees React?

Are Employees Who Work From Home Happier?

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

Why You Need a Remote Work Strategy

How Will the Coronavirus Impact Your Business?

by LizStevens | Mar 3, 2020 | Blog

How will the coronavirus impact your business? Employers respond to the spread of COVID-19 with strategies to help employees who don’t want to get tested or take time off.

Update: The number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S. were updated as of April 13th, 2020.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) is monitoring an outbreak of respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus, COVID-19. Over 500,000 cases have been detected in the U.S. since January 21, 2020, resulting in over 20,000 deaths.

There are a lot of workers out there who don’t have emergency savings and skip medical treatments they can’t afford. If those employees get sick, they might try to “push through it” and bring the virus to the workplace, infecting colleagues and further limiting productivity.

Mercer has released a report to help employers understand how the spread of the coronavirus will impact their employees and how they should respond to it.

How Employers Are Responding to COVID-19

The initial employer response to the coronavirus has been to stay informed, protect and minimize exposure and take precautions, according to Mercer. This is what companies are specifically doing to minimize COVID-19’s impact on their business:

96 percent of employers are not ending expatriate assignments.
72 percent postponed nonessential travel to countries where there are confirmed cases of the COVID-19.
68 percent are providing hand sanitizer in the workplace.
58 percent are arranging for greater flexibility to work from home.
58 percent are requesting self-quarantine of 14 days for staff that recently traveled to mainland China.
48 percent are providing masks in the workplace.
43 percent have instituted a mandatary self-quarantine.

How Will the Coronavirus Impact Your Business?

Nearly 90 percent of global employers are concerned about how the coronavirus will impact their businesses. Over 20 percent of employers are lowering threshold or target goals, changing or adding performance metrics, isolating China business and providing for automatic adjustment for the impact of the virus or allowing for discretionary adjustments at the end of the performance period to account for COVID-19’s impact on business results.

Employers fear a serious impact if a large proportion of their workforce is ill. In the U.S., where employees going to work with a common cold happens regularly, it’s a valid concern that an employee with untested COVID-19 could come to work and spread the illness throughout the workplace. Mercer recommends employers listen to what employees are asking for, address their concerns, set firm policies to keep sick employees away from work and provide protection or prevention supplies onsite to limit the impact of the coronavirus.

Review Your Business Continuity Plan

Mercer also suggests that employers review their business continuity plan to ensure they have a plan in place to handle global outbreaks of pandemics like the coronavirus. A good business continuity plan ensures continuity in the event of a disaster, enables ongoing operations and outlines procedures and instructions to follow in the face of a disaster; whether it is a natural disaster such as an earthquake or hurricane; a fire; a cyber-attack or a medical epidemic.

Employers can minimize employee panic by keeping up to date on reports from government entities like the World Health Organization, communicating updates frequently, following government guidelines, listening to employees and providing protection or prevention supplies.

How Does Remote Working Work?

by LizStevens | Aug 14, 2019 | Blog

How does remote working work? The best remote work policies give employees flexibility and a better work-life balance without sacrificing productivity.

Remote work, or telecommuting, increased significantly (159 percent) between 2005 and 2017, according to a report by FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics.

“Talent shortages are fueling the growth of workplace flexibility right now because not only is it one of the most sought-after benefits among job seekers today, it also expands the talent pool by allowing employers to hire the best and brightest from around the world,” said Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics.

How Does Remote Working Work?

The rules of remote work vary at each organization. Remote work typically offers employees some measure of flexibility regarding when and where they get their work done. And it’s not just employees who benefit—organizations that allow employees to work remotely on a full-time basis expand their candidate pool well beyond the region they operate in. Other organizations permit employees to work remotely in certain situations. For instance, some companies let employees work remotely if they or their child is sick or on certain days, like work from home Fridays.

Setting employees up for remote work used to be a lengthy process. Now, it can be as simple as approving them to log into work from their desktop or laptop at home. Some companies even provide equipment for employees to use when they need to work remotely.

Cybersecurity is something organizations need to take into account when developing remote work policies. Protecting company information is critical when giving employees access to systems and documents outside of the workplace.

The Future of Remote Working

“Remote work has grown steadily since 2005, as companies of all types—private, public, nonprofit, or startup—continue to recognize the bottom-line benefits of integrating remote work into their business strategies,” said Sara Sutton, founder and CEO of FlexJobs. “With improvements to technology, and increasing demands from employees in a tight labor market, we fully expect to see the momentum around this important workplace continue to grow,” said Sutton.

There are five industries that FlexJob’s predicts will have continued growth in remote working:

Computer and IT
Medical and Health
Sales
Education and Training
Customer Service

The explosion in remote work doesn’t show signs of slowing down any time soon. Over the last five years, remote working has grown more than 40 percent. Nearly 5 million people in the U.S. currently telecommute, up from almost 4 million in 2015. Remote work is a win-win for employers having a hard time sourcing talent and employees who desire more flexibility and a better work-life balance.

More on Remote Work and Flexible Scheduling:

Why You Need a Remote Work Strategy

Top 10 Employee Benefits for 2020

Do Flexible Work Schedules Work?

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

How to Make Traditional Work Better for Freelancers

4 Big Employee Benefits Trends for Family Planning

5 Must-Have Benefits for Millennial Employees

by LizStevens | May 22, 2019 | Blog

Two million students will graduate with a bachelor’s degree this year and enter the workforce. MAVY Poll surveyed recent graduates on behalf of the American Institute of CPAs to determine which employee benefits would most help them achieve their financial goals as they begin their job search.

“The job market, and therefore the employee benefits market, is constantly evolving. These days, finding the perfect job is about a lot more than money,” says Gregory J. Anton, Chairman of AICPA’s National CPA Financial Literacy Commission.

Top 5 Must-Have Employee Benefits for Millennials

5. 401(k) Retirement Fund Match was in the top three desired employee benefits for more than 35 percent of millennials. Recently, it’s become clear most Americans have not saved enough for retirement, if they’ve saved any at all, which might be motivating millennials to prioritize retirement funding.

“By beginning to save towards retirement as early as possible, new graduates will benefit from decades of compounding growth. Time is an asset, and those just starting their career are in a prime position to take advantage of it,” says Anton.

4. Working Remotely was in the top three benefits for nearly 40 percent of millennials. Flexible work schedules have become the new norm and millennial employees expect to have some sort of control over when and where they work.

3. Student Loan Forgiveness was an important employee benefit for over 40 percent of millennials. AICPA found nearly two-thirds of young adult job seekers have student loan debt, with an average debt of $33,332.

2. Paid Time Off was a benefits priority for 45 percent of millennials. General Mills recently overhauled their paid leave policy by tripling the length of paid maternity and paternity leave, introducing paid caregiver leave, and boosting bereavement and short-term disability benefits. Sharon DeTaeye, senior manager of human resources specialist operations at General Mills, says, “It’s an ongoing process, but we’re encouraged by the results we have seen so far.”

1. Health Insurance was the benefit millennials felt would most help them achieve their financial goals. Research by the West Health Institute/NORC at the University of Chicago found more than 40 percent of Americans didn’t see a physician when they were sick or injured because of high healthcare costs. Comprehensive healthcare plans that reduce out of pocket costs for employees will be highly attractive to millennial employees.

Millennials Split $100 Towards Employee Benefits

Millennials with student loan debt were asked to split $100 between paying a portion of their student loan debt versus a specific benefit and in all cases they preferred their employer put more money towards paying their student loan debt. Job seekers allocated $60-$80 towards student loan debt and the remaining $20-$40 towards a specific benefit like health insurance, paid time off, tuition reimbursement, life insurance, 401(k) retirement fund match and daycare.