8 Ways COVID-19 Is Making Telecommuting the New Normal

For years, telecommuting has been the privilege of a small number of employees and much-envied digital nomads, who wander the world working from their laptops on whichever beach they fetch up on. But the sudden crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the majority of office workers into a telecommuting workforce, forcing business owners to adapt quickly and react.

Almost overnight, we’ve been able to realize the benefits of telecommuting, although there are challenges to it as well. Fortunately, SaaS tools seem to have been waiting for this moment for years, and are ready to help enterprises and their employees overcome the difficulties of adjusting to telecommuting.

Increase productivity

Simply cutting out the stressful and exhausting commute to work raises the amount of energy that employees can give to their job. Instead of struggling through crowds on public transport or concentrating on the road while driving, employees arrive at their desks refreshed and ready to bring all their attention to bear on work tasks.

By working from home, workers can redirect hours that were wasted fighting traffic to actually getting work done, or use them for the kind of valuable self-care that raises productivity and creative thought. They can adapt their work times to their natural peaks and troughs of attention, spending their most focused hours on work and using times of low concentration for other activities, instead of marking time in ineffective busy-work when their attention is elsewhere.

Ensuring the security of company assets

When work is carried out in premises with an IT team on-site, it’s relatively easy to ensure that your confidential customer data, vital business documents, and private contracts and files are protected from curious or malicious eyes.

But with employees needing remote access to company databases and sending important documents back and forth across the internet, it’s more difficult to keep everything safe. Secure cloud storage platforms like ContractZen help you protect enterprise assets without impeding employee collaboration.

Lower business costs

By cutting out the physical commute, employees can save money on transportation and enterprises can similarly cut their travel reimbursement amounts. Businesses enjoy further savings on office space, office furniture, and other overheads that aren’t needed when most employees are telecommuting.

Raise employee engagement

For most employees, telecommuting improves their work-life balance, increasing engagement and in turn generating a healthier corporate culture that incentivizes workers to give their all to their work. Fully 99% of employees say they would like to work remotely at least some of the time. According to another study, being able to telecommute increases employee happiness, loyalty, and engagement with their company, while also reducing stress and increasing a sense of feeling valued and trusted by their employers.

However, this doesn’t mean that the overnight switch to telecommuting is easy or smooth. Even employees who have been wishing to work from home for years might not be ready for the reality to appear so suddenly. Many companies weren’t ready to support a telecommuting workforce, and it might take some adjustment to develop the policies and workflows for success. SaaS tools can help enterprises overcome the new challenges of telecommuting in order to tap into its benefits.

Sharing resources for frictionless collaboration at home

With all your employees working in separate locations, collaborating on projects becomes a new challenge. SaaS document sharing platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and more enable you to make the necessary resources available to all employees without compromising on security. Team members can work together on the same document, with new changes showing up instantly on every screen so that everyone sees the same version.

Keeping the conversation flowing

When your workers are scattered in their respective homes, communication can become strained. Even employees who yearned to work from home may miss the buzz of a busy office and the chance to chat with colleagues during a coffee break.

Digital communication channels like Google Meet, Slack, Skype, and Google Hangouts can help replicate the water cooler, while video conferencing tools like Google Hangouts Meet and Zoom enable virtual meetings so that everyone can touch base and feel part of a greater whole.

Maintaining a coherent corporate culture from a distance

As the COVID-19 crisis wears on, it becomes more difficult to promote a single, coherent corporate culture. Onboarding new hires remotely will become a bigger issue, and many companies need to assist existing workers to master new software and business tools from a distance.

Digital adoption platforms and advanced employee training software like WalkMe help managers and HR departments to guide new and current employees through active learning programs that they can complete independently, to expand their skill set, learn new business practices, and absorb company culture.

Smoothly continuing customer support

The global economic slowdown accompanying COVID-19 is causing customers to evaporate, making excellent customer support more important than ever to retain loyal customers and maximize lifetime customer value. Yet remote customer service representatives raise the risk that tickets could be lost and customers dropped.

SaaS customer service tools like ZenDesk, FreshDesk, and Groove step into the breach, streamlining remote customer support operations no matter where your agents are located.

SaaS tools make telecommuting a success during COVID-19 and beyond

Almost overnight, COVID-19 has made telecommuting into the new normal for enterprises around the world. Millions of employees and companies are finally able to enjoy the telecommuting benefits of greater productivity, lower costs, and more engaged workers, overcoming the challenges of securing and sharing resources and documents, maintaining communication, promoting corporate culture, and continuing to provide a high level of customer support from a distance thanks to SaaS tools.

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