During the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of us had to work from home, setting up laptops in the kitchen and attending meetings on Zoom or Teams, hoping a family member wouldn’t choose that moment to parade across the room!
Whilst remote working certainly had its challenges, it opened our eyes to a new way of operating and made us reimagine the traditional 9-5 in the office.
Whether working remotely or adopting a hybrid approach, we have all become more flexible in how, when and where we work. According to a recent poll published by the Office for National Statistics, most people who took up homeworking because of the pandemic plan to work both from home and in the workplace in the future. As we now fully embrace the changes the pandemic has brought, Lorna Walkden, Communications Manager at Sorted Communications, looks at the benefits of this new way of working.
Why choose remote or hybrid working?
For most people, remote working means working from home or a shared space. Hybrid working usually applies when a company allows its employees to split their time between working remotely and in the office. However, since the pandemic, hybrid working has become representative of a company’s culture, where employees are trusted to get on with their work, no matter where or when that is and have the flexibility to do so.
When Ali Marsland set up Sorted Communications in 2013, she knew she wanted to create a company that had flexibility as its USP. With no physical headquarters, every member of our 14-strong team works entirely remotely and, thanks to the flexibility of the business, we can align our working hours with our personal lives. This allows everyone to manage their work-life balance and accommodate personal commitments such as childcare, volunteering or hobbies. Katie Gibson, also a communications manager at the company, really benefits from this way of working: “We work completely flexibly at Sorted, which means I’m not tied to working certain hours or days by anything other than my childcare. So, if I want to head to the gym, meet friends for lunch, or go to an event at school I can adjust my schedule to suit.”
So, what are the benefits of this approach?
Be responsive to your clients’ needs
With a team of people all working remotely and no set working hours, the need for travel time is removed and logistics are simplified, maximising the hours you are available to work. A deliberately flexible set-up allows you to adapt and respond quickly to fluid demands and to balance short turnaround tasks alongside larger planned projects.
You can also cover a wide, if not unlimited, geographical area. For example, if one of our clients has multiple offices, or moves location, or needs us to get involved with a project that involves other organisations based around the country – or the world – we can respond quickly.
Align your working hours with your personal life
Remote working doesn’t always mean flexible hours, and some companies still require remote workers to adhere to the traditional 9-5 mentality. But as we’ve already mentioned, it’s always been important to allow our team to control their own working hours, at least to some extent, and to align them with when they know they work best – everyone’s different in that respect.
Being aware of how your remote workers like to work will help you both get the best out of a working from home arrangement; flexibility to choose time and place of work makes for happier employees, and happier employees are more productive employees. For us, it’s helped us build the lifestyle we’ve always wanted.
Align your working hours with your clients’ needs
We know that busy comms leads often turn to freelancers for assistance, hiring someone to come into the office on specific days. But book your freelancer to come in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the chances are you won’t have everything you need for them to get the work done until Friday. Or the person they need to interview is only available on Wednesdays. And what if it turns out you need them for more days a week, or not as many?
Working remotely gives you so much more flexibility, allowing you to squeeze in at least a half-hour phone call or a quick writing/proofreading task on pretty much any day, at any time, according to what your clients need.
And what are the potential challenges?
Communication is key
It’s hugely important for any business, but when you’re working remotely it’s essential to establish open channels of two-way communication between managers and employees and within teams. Internal communications could be a potential challenge as people who aren’t used to working from home can quickly start to feel isolated; giving them a way to communicate and continue to feel part of a team and part of the wider company is vital. At Sorted, we work hard to build a strong team culture with weekly team meetings, 1-2-1s, a WhatsApp group, regular e-newsletters and ad hoc calls to keep everyone in touch with what’s going on.
Internally, we use WhatsApp for regular 1-2-1 check-in calls, which we do over video, not just voice. If the only contact you have with your team is emails and occasional voice calls you don’t get the same cues from body language, intonation or behaviour that you would if you were working in an office with them, so it’s harder to judge when there may be an issue.
We also have an informal WhatsApp chat group, which we use for ‘watercooler’ conversations – it’s a free-for-all in there. It’s a great way of helping build a sense of ‘team’ among a disparate group of remote individuals.
We also ensure we are readily available and in close contact with our clients. We have a shared email inbox which several people can access and an office phone number which is always routed to someone who’s available, so our clients are assured of a quick response while we work to our flexible schedules. As we do internally, we also use video calls with our clients, which has become standard practice since the pandemic and has been the single biggest game-changer for us.
Keep on track
The growth of remote working has resulted in the development of effective systems that allow you to keep track of workloads and projects. We used Flow for several years but have now moved to monday.com. Many companies also like tools such as Asana, Trello or Basecamp. There are lots of task management systems available but it’s crucial to use something.
Our account manager has oversight of the day-to-day workload and liaises with our writing team, coordinating via monday.com, supplemented with email and WhatsApp.
Regular communication ensures everyone stays on the same page and you have early warning of any potential issues, so there’s a chance to address them. Without good open communication channels small issues can become major problems before you even know they exist.
All businesses are different
This remote, flexible approach works well for us, and for our clients, but every organisation is different. Have you made the move to a remote working set-up during the pandemic? Does it suit your team? Or are you finding it tough?
Remember, communication is crucial, both internally and with clients and suppliers; if you’d like any support or to chat to us about our experience of working remotely, please give us a shout at [email protected].