Whilst we’re still very much not out of the woods in regards to the coronavirus as experts warn of the risk of a second wave appearing throughout the winter months, much of life is on track to seemingly getting back to some level of normal. Businesses are starting to reopen, where possible employees are leaving their homes and returning to work, but the real winners here may be the smaller businesses that have been able to show much greater flexibility in what they can offer.
(Image from smallbusiness.co.uk)
Whilst smaller businesses have typically had a different working dynamic as the smaller team will need to ensure the hard work is done, it does build a different relationship to a bigger establishment. Smaller businesses for example were much more willing and flexible to allow employees to work from home during the start of the pandemic as it was essential where possible to continue working, but as the “new normal” starts to come around, these same small businesses are the ones allowing remote working to continue or the flexibility to pick and choose wherever needed – with a build-up of trust from working closely together and the remote work done in the past few months, small businesses have been able to build something that isn’t entirely possible in a larger business, such as Sovereign Planned Services.
There are still some challenges to overcome with the adjustment however, although smaller businesses have been more agile to adapt to the change and have been able to cope a little better. As the introduction of technology, such as the Wide-Area Network (wan) has become simpler, it allows the employees of a company to connect to the main office, thus ensuring they have all the access they need to continue performing their work responsibilities to the highest standards. There are other services that also help to enable remote working such as the use of Agora’s voice chat. This introduces a live stream of audio between colleagues where they can ask questions and share information without the need for video. As it’s been said, individuals still need to perform whilst working from home in order to deliver the same service – whilst research suggests that productivity and job satisfaction do increase whilst working remotely, that may not always be the case for every individual.
The biggest challenge to tackle will always be the distractions at home particularly those that still have family around as lockdown measures still exist for many of us, other distractions come in the way of entertainment particularly with our devices as handheld gaming on mobile devices has found a huge surge in recent months particularly for mobile gambling sites, although changes had been made to limit exposure options and initiatives such as Gamstop were granted more authority, sites such as Maximum Casinos have still been performing extremely well and are capitalising on the fact that many people are still at home and looking to use a little extra free time on sites like these.
Despite the challenges to overcome, the prospect of a future in remote working is a huge boon for smaller businesses – the flexibility it provides and the increased employee happiness as commute times and work requirements are cut out will serve as a permanent benefit – and now with talks that a four-day work week could become a future feature, the changes continue to benefit the remote worker that much more. There’s a lot of change still to come in the workplace, and the agility of smaller businesses is essential to delivering these changes.