New Research Reveals 64% of Companies Don’t Feel Equipped to Manage Remote Employees
New research into remote work reveals surprising facts about the current and future landscape for remote and hybrid work. Download the full report to find out more.
At Insightful, we pride ourselves on an up-to-the-minute understanding of how the world works.
With this in mind, we recently embarked on in-depth research into the status of remote and hybrid work to create our The State of Remote Work Report 2023: How Companies are Preparing for the Future of Work.
Download The State of Remote Work Report 2023 for free here.
The research behind The State of Remote Work Report 2023 revealed insights how leaders at some of the world’s most prominent organizations are thinking about remote and hybrid work.
Key Report Findings:
- 63.91% of company leaders believe they don’t have the right tools to manage remote employee productivity.
- 71.45% of company leaders will allow remote work at least some of the time.
- 64.68% of company leaders will allow their employees to permanently work remotely or hybrid.
- 21.38% of company leaders reported that collaboration and communication are the biggest challenge when working remotely.
- 38.06% of company leaders believe that employees are less productive in a remote or hybrid environment.
- A 383% increase in the adoption of remote and hybrid work was seen among enterprise companies.
The Ongoing Challenges of Remote Work
The State of Remote Work Report revealed an increased acceptance and adoption of remote work. However, it also uncovered that many leaders still don’t feel fully equipped to operate optimally in this new environment.
Among a wide-ranging series of findings, almost two-thirds of respondents stated they don’t have the tools they need to effectively manage their team’s productivity when working remotely.
In a further indication that how to monitor employees working from home continues to present challenges, 38.06% of company leaders said that they believe employees are less productive when working remotely. And 21.38% of respondents cited communication and collaboration as the biggest challenges in a distributed work environment.
Remote Work is Here to Stay
Despite the challenges expressed, the report revealed that a resounding 71.45% of company leaders said they will offer remote work to employees in future at least some of the time.
Further reinforcing that workplaces of the future will be distributed, the report also found that 64.68% of company leaders stated that remote and hybrid work will become a permanent fixture in their organization.
This research strongly suggests that remote and hybrid work are here to stay, and that they will become the prevailing work models of the future.
That said, the research also shows there are ongoing challenges for company leaders when managing remotely. Despite the two-year remote work experiment brought on by COVID-19, many leaders still don’t feel fully equipped to manage their team when they work away from the office.
As remote work is still at a nascent stage, we anticipate that over time the challenges expressed by company leaders today will ease through the continued evolution of remote infrastructure and operating mindsets.
How to Manage in a Remote Team
If you, as a leader, have been confronted with challenges of managing in more distributed environments, you’re not alone. As our report indicates, shifting to remote has upended management practices and philosophies for many leaders. So, let’s take a look at the ins and outs of managing a remote workforce.
In increasingly remote work environments, leaders are turning to or, at least, thinking about how technology can play a vital role in managing the distributed workforce of the future.
The right technology has the ability to mitigate time and location differences. It can keep teams aligned, regardless of work schedules and bridge even the largest geographic gulfs.
When looking into work tracking for a hybrid team or remote employee monitoring, the core principle behind it is important. Don’t think of managing your remote team members as watching over their every action. You wouldn’t do this in the office, after all.
Instead, effective leadership in remote and hybrid set ups is about creating an environment where your team has the support and flexibility they need to thrive. While at the same time maintaining a level of visibility that is instructive but not intrusive.
Go Beyond Simple Remote Work Monitoring
Trusted by 1,300+ global brands, Insightful’s workforce analytics and productivity monitoring software for employees is much more than simply monitoring software for employees. Insightful helps you improve workflows, create more efficient processes, support employee engagement, reduce burnout and much more. In the office, remote or hybrid.
With Insightful, it’s possible to manage your remote and hybrid team just as effectively – even more so, in fact – as you do when you’re all in one central location.
Find out how Insightful can help you manage your remote or hybrid team with a free trial today.
Report Methodology
The State of Remote Work Report 2023 was compiled based on online and offline surveys of companies of various sizes, across multiple sectors. In total, respondents from 620 organizations completed the survey over a two-month period from December 2021 to February 2022.
Respondents include leaders from Fortune 500 companies, publicly listed companies, privately-held technology companies, government agencies, top universities and prominent media organizations.