More than half of employees will work remotely in 2020

The way we work is shifting towards greater geographic dispersion; remote work is a growing fact, and this requires that administrators are prepared with the skills and technologies needed to manage work teams whose members are located in different parts of the country, even the world, and almost never see in person.

This increase in remote work, especially driven by greater integration of national economies and the removal of barriers to free trade, provides a wide range of benefits for both the individual worker and the company, which in turn contribute further to the multiplication of dispersed teams. Indeed, at the World Leaders’ Summit in London, more than a third of executives said they expect that by the year 2020, more than half of their full-time employees will be working remotely.

Thus, managers are accustomed to the idea that they will not see their staff on a regular basis (in some cases, they will never see them), and although some will work from home a few miles from their colleagues, while others will do so for thousands of kilometers away with a different time zone, the reality is that many of the skills used to manage a local workforce will continue to be important in managing these new remote and dispersed work teams.

These teams’ leaders must overcome the differences derived from the geographical location in order to maintain their performance and results. We are therefore facing a phase in which new challenges arise that require concrete solutions.

In this sense, a study by the firm ILM about the experience in these new teams of remote and dispersed work concludes that:

• Members working at greater distances will appreciate more the benefits of remote work.

• Members working closer are more likely to highlight the problems of remote work.

• Most remote work teams meet physically at least once each month.

• For 84% of workers, improving the work-life balance is the great advantage of telecommuting.

• Main disadvantages include maintaining work discipline (88%), misunderstanding when giving / receiving instructions (88%) and overloading of the email box (83%).

• The mental wellbeing of isolation and loneliness is one of the major risk factors.