The Remote Working Landscape in 2023

Studies have found that job listings offering remote work options have tripled since last year. Pre-pandemic, only 12.4% of the workforce was working remotely, fast forward to today, and a staggering 84% of employees are looking to work remotely entering 2023. Remote work culture had gone from nearly non-existent in 2019 to the preferred way to work in 2022. But why and how has this been possible, and has it negatively or positively affected businesses?

As the first lockdown struck in march 2020, businesses were seemingly out of nowhere forced to pull all of their employees out of the office. Businesses that didn't adapt or believed this would only be a temporary change quickly found their business on the brink of collapsing. More proactive businesses choose to adopt a remote workforce. For a lot of businesses, it was a rocky start. Many have never had a remote team, and having to make this investment whilst also dealing with an unpredictable pandemic market didn't come without its challenges.

After only 6 months of the pandemic, employees that had been working from home had found that they could not only work as effectively if not better from their home, but they also had more time to spend with their family, look after pets, and enjoy their hobbies. It's not only the workers that were starting to embrace the change but business owners too.

With nearly all employees now working from home and the initial investments into remote tech being made businesses quickly saw a return on their investment. No more need to pay for and maintain office space, the talented staff we're more viable to employees as they could be from anywhere, and even employee productivity increased.

What are the Benefits For Employees?

Just like business owners, employees were sceptical to the idea of working from their place of rest, but quickly employees realised that as long as boundaries are set and a designated space was set up for working, (so that their home didn't start to feel like the office) working from home had a number of benefits, these include:

• Saving time and money spent on commuting 
• Spending more time with their family
• Some found they could focus better and having the freedom to manage their own time increased their productivity.
• People quickly found they were able to communicate with their teams and managers with ease, thanks to applications such as Zoom and Teams
• Many employees felt an increase in their motivation

Not so long ago, working from home for many jobs, was completely impossible. Businesses and individuals didn't have access to the kinds of technology needed to do work from home. Fast forward to today and there is a plethora of applications built to give users as much flexibility as possible. Nothing is more time-consuming than that. 

Hosted Desktops:  Hosted Desktops have been used by businesses way before the pandemic for a variety of reasons. In essence, it lets you connect any computer no matter its specs to a 'hosted desktop'  that is stored in the cloud. You then use this 'hosted desktop' as you would a normal computer. 

Below is a list of reasons many businesses choose Hosted Desktops as their solution of choice during the pandemic:

• Can be used on any device that has a strong internet connection
• Hosted Desktops can be powerful virtual machines that can easily handle any application designers and other creatives throw at it
• The ability to connect on different devices and from anywhere brings increased productivity
• Because hosted desktops are hosted in secure ISO 27001 certificated data centres you can be assured your data is safe from cyber-criminals.

One Drive: OneDrive allowed you to easily store data in the cloud which can then be accessed from anywhere at any time with an internet connection. OneDrive works hand in hand with Sharepoint which then integrates into the rest of the Microsoft 365 roster (which is typically used by most businesses) making it the natural choice for businesses looking to easily send data to partners and colleagues.

Not only does OneDrive allow for easy access and sharing, but it also offers real-time collaboration, enabling you to work on a single Microsoft 365 document with multiple colleagues at any time, from anywhere, making it perfect for your remote workforce.

Teams: It's unlikely you haven't heard of Microsoft's Video and text Communication application Teams. Teams were already popular with a user count of 20 million but post-pandemic this has now reached an outstanding 270 million users and for good reasons.

Teams allowed us to host everything from 1-to-1s, meetings and chats, no longer did you need to be in the office to ask a question or work on a collaborative project. These days many businesses will have teams meetings even when everyone is in the office, it has become that much of a standard and for good reason. Offering everything from, real-time collaboration and video calling, to large meetings and easy file sharing Microsoft Teams could be the communication application you're business needs, learn more about Microsoft Teams HERE

What Does Remote Work Look Like in 2023

"People are more productive working from home than people would have expected. Some people thought that everything was just going to fall apart, and it hasn’t.” - Mark Zuckerberg CEO Meta

It makes sense that remote work is now here to stay, business owners no longer require employees to be in the office to work productively and therefore they save money and can hire a wider pool of experienced employees. Staff, save money on commuting, and are able to spend more time with their families as well as being able to manage their own time giving them a sense of pride and responsibility.

We are now leaving the pandemic in the past, but remote work is here to stay, managing a remote workforce in-house can be a time-consuming costly and tedious job that for many is the reason they don't invest in their IT infrastructure. If you want to make remote work management stress-free, cost-effective, and straightforward, we can be the partner to help you do so.

The entrust IT Group, helped countless businesses work through the pandemic by providing them with state-of-the-art IT solutions that connected individuals no matter where they worked. Despite the pandemic coming to an end, businesses now understand the power a strong hybrid workforce model can have if tackled correctly. If you're looking to make your remote workforce as effective as possible it's worth us having a chat. Get in contact on 0330 002 0045 or email enquiries@entrustit.co.uk, to be put in contact with one of our experienced consultants.