The business impacts of the pandemic have been varied, with certain companies going out of work to others making more revenue than usual. Regardless of the industry these companies belong to, there has been an increased awareness for adopting relevant digital solutions.
The social distancing norms have compelled my companies to shift to remote work for ensuring the health and safety of their employees. Although this has been a boon for many, companies initially struggled to adjust to the situation.
Managing remote employees and allocating work needed strong management solutions. To ensure employees are being productive while working from home, employers adopted use of various tech tools. This entire phase has given rise to various trends that will be followed in the coming future.
Let’s look at the top trends that have made work from home possible and productive in the pandemic:
Structured project management:
Even if managers were using project management tools earlier, they never actually used them to their full capacity. With remote work becoming a norm in the pandemic, powerful project management software’s and apps helped managers effectively delegate work.
With improved planning and scheduling of tasks, managers are able to quickly assign resources and set deadlines. The transparency provided by the software has made it easy for remote employees to collaborate with each other. This has helped in enhancing business productivity even in such turbulent times.
Digital training solutions:
As the global work culture changed, so did the learning processes. Many companies finally realised the importance of providing employees L&D opportunities. To ensure employees keep learning despite the distance, there was a massive adoption of digital learning solutions that can be accessed on all kinds of devices.
Although eLearning has been a preferred way of delivering training digitally since quite some time now, it became the top choice to allow employees to learn at their own pace. With microlearning being the core concept of eLearning modules, employees could learn at their convenience in short breaks rather than having to endure 2 to 3 hours of training material.
Employee time tracking:
For managers to be aware of employee performance and daily productivity, there was a need to have an automated solution that will track their daily work progress. By encouraging employees to use a timekeeping software, managers were able to understand how long an employee is taking to execute a certain task.
Even employees have been benefited by the use of timekeeping software as now they can better schedule their work by reflecting on the statistics provided by it. They are able to identify their most productive hours with a billable hours tracker and slack time which is helping them to focus better on their work. Thus, making sure the best use of their time.
Automated payments and ESS:
One of the major factors that contributes to employee satisfaction is receiving correct payments on time. It helps build their loyalty towards the company and increases their engagement. The pandemic ensured companies opted for automated solutions to pay employees for their hard work without any delay.
With payroll software’s automating the entire process, the process becomes smooth and there is a massive saving of time as well as money. Also, employee self service (ESS) portals helped employees get access to this information easily without having to reach out to the HR for every single query.
Conclusion:
The new work-life paradigm has encouraged companies to focus more on clear and concise communication. This has helped keep the workflow smooth and prevented any inconsistencies in work performance. All of these trends have collaboratively ensured that despite the lack of personal interaction, there are various substitutes that give almost the same experience as working together in-person. These trends have given many companies the confidence to completely give up their office space and move to remote work culture permanently.
