Hot or not? The pros and cons of remote work
The pandemic has sped up the digitization of services in many sectors and made it common to work remotely. However, it’s worth highlighting that this form of work has existed for long in the IT world, and many companies gave up on standard work from the office entirely. This trend obviously has its proponents and opponents. If you’re considering whether it’s a good solution for you, get to know the advantages and disadvantages of remote work as seen in our team.
One of the main advantages of remote work is definitely the ability to work from any time in the world, at a time and place you choose. Thanks to this option, you can work for a company hundreds or thousands of miles from you. You don’t have to worry about commuting or the time wasted in traffic jams or problems with parking lots. However, you need to remember that working from home becomes tedious after some time, and people with trouble focusing on their tasks may become less efficient. A lot of people also forget that in their office, they have their comfortable chair, ergonomic desk, and the proper lighting, all of these hard to reach in your apartment. Also, sitting for 8 hours in one position on a sofa or by the table may negatively impact your health and wellbeing.
Another key aspect of remote work is the orientation of tasks. You don’t have a boss who physically controls how and if you work from home. You’re the master of your time, but remember that your boss counts your results. It means that if you don’t execute your tasks during work hours, you will have to finish them in your free time. That’s why remote work is a good solution for people with great self-discipline and time-management skills. To make it work, at AppVerk, we use JIRA to track and assign tasks for every employee, set priorities, and track the progress. To communicate swiftly, we use Slack so that we can send files, voice messages but also dynamically create rooms/channels with the relevant team members for the project. Moreover, Slack has a lot of convenient integrations, so it allows you to integrate and go from different tabs and apps freely.
As a team, we think that remote work is a more convenient form of work for experienced people who can organize their day plan and task list. However, to keep the ideal state, it is good to strike a balance between the number of days you work on- and off-the office. It’s easier to establish relationships in the office this way for the long term. When you start working with someone, it’s always better to meet several times, have some coffee. This way, it’s easier to make it with people you work with, and the online meetings will be more efficient. That’s why the AppVerk experts say that it’s good to separate the project and development spheres in remote work from the social sphere and plan regular f-2-f meetings to build better relationships in the team.
Thinking of working remotely? Contact us – maybe it’s you we’re looking for!