When employers allow workers to work remotely, workers keep more money in their pockets, and they like that. From the employer’s perspective, remote work has the effect of giving a pay raise without increasing employee pay. When employees save money, experience less stress, and enjoy work-life balance through remote work, they can experience increased job satisfaction, which can increase employee retention.  

Fully Remote: Pros and Cons 

A fully-remote job has no requirement to work on-site in a company office. By requiring no physical presence in an office building, fully-remote positions have four primary advantages.

Pros: First, when the job is 100% remote, companies can recruit from a larger labor pool, which can be regional, national or international. Second, when employees do all of their work remotely, they don’t need company office space, and this can reduce overhead costs. Next, surveys indicate that employees insist on flexible work arrangements. Therefore, remote or hybrid positions can attract prospective workers. Finally, when workers feel ill, they may not feel like traveling to the office, but they often feel well enough to work at their computer. Remote work allows them to work rather than calling in sick. And as Covid taught us, remote work helps prevent coworkers from spreading illness to each other.

Con: As we try to imagine the cons of remote work, here is one: Fully-remote employees may be at a greater risk for feeling isolated and disengaged. Employees who never work face-to-face with colleagues inside a physical office building can miss out on the social events and spontaneous interactions that occur within the hallways and offices of the traditional workplace.  

All employees want to feel valued and supported, but this can be difficult when employees work offsite and never meet their supervisor or coworkers in person. To overcome this challenge, companies and supervisors need to develop strategies for including remote employees and making them feel like genuine members of the team. Organizations must find ways to engage remote employees and imbue them with the company culture.  

Hybrid: Pros and Cons 

Surveys indicate that most employees still value going into the office, and they want to work onsite with their supervisors and coworkers. A recent Gallup poll found that 60% of workers want a hybrid job, 20% want fully-remote, and 20% want to work only onsite. A hybrid work arrangement allows employees to work offsite part of the time and onsite part of the time.  

The hybrid workplace has several pros. Employees benefit from the social and work-related interactions that occur within a physical office while enjoying the flexibility of working remotely part of the time. This combination of onsite and remote work enhances employees’ work/life balance. Employers also benefit because hybrid positions contribute to employee job satisfaction, which improves employee retention. Furthermore, the on-site interactions of hybrid allow employers to reinforce company culture through employee participation in company events and informal communication.  

Hybrid positions can help a company reduce real estate costs through remote rotation, a space-sharing strategy. For example, let’s say that a company has five open office spaces, but it has 10 employees. With remote rotation, the company would identify two five-person teams. We’ll call them the orange team and the blue team. On Mondays & Wednesdays, the five employees of the orange team use the five office spaces. On those days, the five employees of the blue team would work remotely. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the teams switch work locations. The blue team works on-site in the office spaces and the orange team works remotely. On Fridays, both teams work remotely.  

One con of hybrid workplaces occurs in employee recruitment. Because employees commute to a physical office, employers must recruit within a smaller, local pool of talent rather than from the larger labor pool that’s available for fully-remote positions. 

The Remote Swiss Army Knife 

Employers can adapt remote and hybrid work in ways that make sense for different positions. For example, some workplaces have different versions of remote work. In one department, employees might have a hybrid arrangement that allows them to alternate between remote days and on-site days. In a different department, all employees might work remotely unless there is a special event that requires their attendance. For these two scenarios, employees who don’t want to work remotely don’t have to. Finally, still another team might be  composed of 100% remote employees and they never visit a physical office. 

Converting Jobs to Remote or Hybrid 

If you’re an employer, and you think that jobs at your company can’t be done remotely…think again. For example, a “hands on” job like occupational therapist has traditionally taken place in person. However, U.S. News and World Report now lists occupational therapist as one of the top 20 remote jobs in America. Search job sites, and you will find some surprising remote positions that include physicians, fitness instructors, and admin assistants.  

Of course, some jobs cannot be done remotely, but many can. Employers just need to sincerely analyze a job to determine which tasks can be done from anywhere. To illustrate the process, let’s analyze a traditional, onsite job like restaurant manager. Let’s see if remote work could be an option for this job. 

Managing a restaurant requires the manager to spend many hours interacting face-to-face with employees, vendors, customers, and others. However, even this position has potential to become a successful hybrid position. Consider the following list of managerial tasks that can be done from anywhere: scheduling staff, tracking and approving employee hours, recording payroll, ordering food and supplies, creating reports, scheduling interviews, developing budgets, scheduling training, plus reviewing and updating menus. With the help of basic technology, numerous managerial tasks can be done remotely. Perhaps all of those tasks could translate into one remote workday per week, or every other week, for the restaurant manager.  

When companies find ways to add flexibility to a position, they improve their ability to recruit and retain quality employees. If job hunters have a choice of a hybrid job that allows at least one remote workday per week versus a job that requires commuting every day, most people will choose the hybrid job if all other factors are equal. Therefore, if possible, employers should try to integrate the flexibility of some remote work into jobs. 

Effective Remote Policies 

Some work situations may warrant intense monitoring by supervisors. However, in most traditional offices, supervisors have better things to do than spy on their employees to make sure they are working. In effective onsite workplaces, companies set clear expectations. They teach employees how to meet those expectations. They then measure how well employees meet those expectations. Bosses measure productivity without directly observing every action onsite workers take, and they can take that same approach with remote employees.  

Accountability for remote workers starts with having company policies that are designed specifically for remote workers. Many companies accidentally stumbled into remote work, and they have not updated their traditional company policies to address the unique challenges and conditions that remote workers face. Remote employees can’t do what their employers expect unless they know what their employers expect. To be fair to employees and supervisors, companies need clear, logical policies that directly address the unique conditions of the remote workplace.