[Business]
For plenty of people living and toiling away on this planet, a typical work day often involves being chained to a desk for eight to ten consecutive hours.
Hour long commutes are also a regular part of the deal—whether this means sleeping on the train or driving to work. Then there are the coffee breaks—sometimes the highlight of a particularly stressful day, especially when it’s shared with friends and likeable coworkers.
In comes the annoying colleague—every office has one or several of them. Whenever you see this colleague, you immediately stop, step into another room or turn on your back and run in the opposite direction. Otherwise, you’d have to spend the next couple of minutes of your life locked into the most boring or cheerless conversation you’ve ever had. Then someone comes in sick and before the week is out, you and your cubicle neighbor are already hacking up a lung.
Changing Work Patterns
Technology has changed all that though. As more solutions come into the market and offer easy-to-use systems along with reliable connections and high quality video services even better than the last, working remote has become more than possible.
Companies have plenty of names to pick from. Chief among these is Blue Jeans. The Blue Jeans remote video conferencing system offers businesses the chance to take full advantage of many opportunities that come with remote work. Here are a few of them:
Do online interviews
Preliminary interviews via video conferencing are convenient and easy to set up. Companies can do away with a huge waiting area for applicants, saving office space which could be maximized for other purposes. Applicants no longer have to commute to and from the office for initial interviews, saving them effort, time and money in the process. It’s a win for both sides.
Hire global
Interviews can be done online, enabling companies to interview and hire applicants from absolutely anywhere on the globe. Whether the perfect applicant lives halfway across the world, several oceans and continents apart, or in the same country but in a far-flung state, remote solutions allow this people to come together and work as a team.
Work anywhere
An article from Mashable cites a study from the Telework Research Network that says 80 percent of people like the idea of being able to telecommute at work. In some cases, some even prefer to forego a raise in exchange for being able to work from home a few days a week. Add remote teams to the mix and you have a very flexible work arrangement that allows employees to work from virtually anywhere in the world. Whether you have parents wanting to spend more time with their kids or employees who live in another country, state or time zone, video conferencing tools make the situation a convenient, cost-effective and realistic solution.
Other Advantages of Remote Work
The power of technology to bring people together via collaborative tools such as video conferencing also comes with a number of other perks.
These are: The chances of awkward, stilted conversations happening with an annoying colleague or officemate drops to zero.
Worrying whether you might catch something contagious from a sick cubicle neighbor is no longer an issue.
For employees who share their work spaces with someone, working remote means you no longer have to deal with tables left sticky by someone else’s cookie crumbs last night.
You can work any time you want. Unless you have a video chat scheduled, you don’t have to be at your work for eight to ten hours straight. Flexible hours mean you can work for four hours this morning sleep or do errands for the next four and come back to do finish your shift by early or late evening.
Remote Teams Make it Work
Commutes, coffee breaks and cubicle neighbors—remote teams have none of these. That sounds pretty great. However, remote teams do lose out on one important advantage that teams in shared physical spaces have: great communication. Merely sharing a cubicle with someone already gives you incredible insight into a coworker’s personality, how he takes care of issues, how she handles stress.
These might seem unimportant but it actually helps you to get a better read on the people you work with. That kind of knowledge also builds trust. Both these qualities help teams reach better, more accurate decisions at work. Which begs the question: how are remote teams making it work? Here are two ideas at the core of that:
Technology
Using technology in creative ways to connect remote teams is one. Video conferencing tools are vital, along with messaging apps and platforms that allow ongoing conversations among team members. Some companies like Foursquare are investing money in devising systems that allow their remote teams 24/7 web cam contact with each other.
Transparency
In place of sharing an office where you gain insights into your coworker’s personality—outside of the work you both do—some companies are resorting to total transparency, which includes sharing information like how much you sleep at night or how much you earn.
All in all, it seems video conferencing is already an integral part of the work dynamic for many companies. It’s only a matter of time before other industry sectors catch up. That’s something else we’d love to see.
