The 3 Biggest Struggles Most People Face with Remote Work
Loneliness is the top struggle for remote workers
Research from Buffer showed the top challenges for remote workers and remote organizations: communication, collaboration, and loneliness.
As you don’t have a physical office to go to, those things become more challenging.
Remote work has significant benefits. Not having to commute is considered the top one. You also can have a flexible schedule and spend more time with your family.
I founded a gaming company in 2012. In 2014, I decided to get rid of the office. Understanding how to face the biggest struggles helped me build a profitable six-figure business.
Remote work is a fantastic way of life for so many people and companies around the world. However, it also comes with its fair share of challenges.
What can you do to solve the three most significant struggles of remote work?
Communication
When you work in an office, you can tap the shoulder of your colleague and start talking. You can end a meeting and talk more about it as you get back to your table. You can’t do those things when you are working remotely.
Many professionals feel far from the rest of their team when working from their homes. They don’t know how to reach them, how to share information, and discuss problems.
Many professionals decided to have endless Zoom meetings. They want to compensate for the lack of presence that a physical office brings. However, more Zoom meetings are not the answer to improve communication in a remote environment.
You should have meetings that made sense. There are three essential steps for every meeting:
- A precise topic and goal before its start
- A deadline
- A person responsible for running it
At my remote company, I used Slack to talk via text with my team. There, the communication happens in channels. It helps bring the right people together to share ideas, make decisions and get on with the job. We had different channels to talk about different topics.
When we needed to have a more profound talk, we used Zoom for video. Talking via text is good when you don’t need a quick response. However, when you need to enter a more considerable discussion, talking via video is the best option.
Find ways to build a remote environment where you can bring your team together online. Don’t let them alone working by themselves without communicating with other people. Use tools like Slack and Zoom to help you with that.
Collaboration
Business hours are the hours during the day in which business is commonly conducted. Typical business hours vary widely by country. Workers may communicate with each other more easily. They may find a convenient divide between professional and personal life.
How can you deal with collaboration when people could be working in different moments?
First, you must communicate effectively to improve collaboration in a remote environment. You need to make clear what you expect from your team. You need to make clear what needs to be done. Once they know what to do, they will figure out how to do it.
You may also use a task application like Trello. You can organize everything that needs to be done in an application like that. You can also see how things are going even without an office.
I didn’t have a fixed schedule in my remote company. Everyone could start and stop working at any time they believed was better for themselves.
We had a daily meeting at 10 AM that was the final time to start working. Some people choose to start working at that time. Others prefer to start earlier. People could work late at night or on the weekends if they believed it would be better for them.
Building games demand different capabilities, and we believed in teamwork. Because of that, we incentivized people to work most of their time when other people were also working. In that case, we incentivized people to work during business hours.
They knew what they needed to do. We had our tasks organized before starting the week. They could also always ask for help.
After finding ways to bring your team together online, make clear what you expect from them. Make clear what needs to be done and let them work. Use an application like Trello to organize everything.
Loneliness
Loneliness is consistently selected as a top struggle for remote workers. They usually work alone when they don’t go to a physical office. You don’t see people. You don’t talk out loud.
Remote workers feeling lonely is also an accurate reflection of a larger-scale societal struggle with loneliness. In the U.S., loneliness has been labeled an epidemic. In the U.K., almost one-fifth of the population has reported that they are “always or often lonely.”
You can try to create some moments virtually to fix loneliness. For some groups and individuals, it will be constant instant messaging. For others, it will be live phone conversations or video conferences. Some people might want to use WhatsApp, Slack, or Zoom.
I had a daily meeting that should be fast. It shouldn’t last more than 15 minutes. Thus, I decided to send the Zoom link for the meeting 10 minutes before its start. Employees should connect before 10 AM. That allowed us to start and finish on time.
In the beginning, employees joined the meeting almost at 10 AM. In those brief minutes, we could talk about subjects unrelated to work. We could make jokes and laugh.
After a few weeks, most employees joined the meeting a few seconds after sending the Zoom link. There was a healthy competition about who joined first. Everybody wanted to enjoy the full 10 minutes of fun. Encouraging fun moments helped us deal with loneliness.
Extroverted people suffer more in a remote environment. Thus, I asked for one of my extroverted employees to organize online encounters after business hours. We mostly talked about not related work subjects and had drinks, simulating the life of a bar. Even though we were still at our homes, it was nice to spend time online with other people.
The mental health of your team is a severe subject. You should create moments to bring your team together online. The human being is a social being, and we like to talk and see people. You can simulate that online.
Quick recap
Every situation has its pros and cons. Every situation has its benefits and struggles.
The same thing happens with remote work. Don’t be disappointed if you or your team are facing one of the struggles above. You can always do something about them.
First, find ways to build a remote environment where you can bring your team together online to share information and discuss problems. Don’t let them alone working by themselves without communicating with other people. Use tools like Slack and Zoom to help you with that.
After finding ways to bring your team together online, make clear what you expect from them. Make clear what needs to be done and let them work. Use an application like Trello to organize everything.
Finally, create moments to bring your team together online for fun. The human being is a social being. We like to talk and see people. You can always try to create some moments virtually to fix loneliness.
