Working remotely is the dream, right?
It provides a flexible work environment where teams can essentially set their own independent schedules. This allows for more time to travel, for family, or whatever is important to you.
While this may sound like the best-case scenario for your work/life balance, working remotely is not always what it seems. Remote work environments often create new challenges that don’t reveal themselves until you’re in the trenches. Our coworking space is chock-full of professionals who have experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of many different work environments. We’ve heard it all. We’ve experienced it all. And we want to provide you with a glimpse of why co-working spaces could really help your business.
Here are the top three things that suffer when you and your team work remotely:
Collaboration
One of the top struggles of remote workers is collaboration (or lack thereof). In fact, 21% of remote workers reportedly struggle with collaborating with others.
Remote teams replace face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings, instant messages, and conference calls. We all know how these technologies can be hit or miss.
“Hey, Larry…I think you’re muted.”
“You keep breaking up…can you repeat your plan?”
“I don’t understand what you are trying to tell me!”
Since your collaborations are limited to scheduled times and impersonal mediums, creativity suffers. Misunderstanding runs rampant and body language can’t be used to help with the crucial relationship building that happens face-to-face.
Business leaders know collaboration is crucial to grow a company. Those one-off chats in the kitchen can be more valuable than an hour of instant messaging. They can lead to a fresh perspective on a tired subject or a quick solution to a problem without relying on different time zones, schedules, and communication miscues.
Communication
Imagine you’re working on a project and have a brilliant idea but need to validate your hunch. If you work in an office, great! Simply push away from your desk, walk over to your colleague, and ask for their opinion and feedback.
When working remotely, getting that valuable insight is not as simple. You’ll send an email then have to wait for a reply (which could be anywhere for a few hours to a day). Once you receive a reply, you’ll play the back-and-forth game to make sure you both understand each other. It also disrupts the thought process flow because you’ll get distracted with something else while waiting for a reply. All of this extra communication, time, and distraction just to get to the same result as a 5 minute conversation with your work neighbor.
Face-to-face communication offers incredible benefits, such as the opportunity to pick up non-verbal cues like body language, hand gestures, and facial expressions. An instant message, without that visual context, can be misread as rude or insincere. The same instant message can be said with a frown or a smile and mean something completely different!
Meeting with your team in-person allows you to provide all of the details at once, resolve questions as a group, and benefit from the creativity and energy of your peers.
Camaraderie
Culture and camaraderie can suffer when working remotely. Physical workplaces provide you the opportunity to build relationships with your coworkers on a daily basis – you’ll grow to understand their communication styles, learn what makes them tick, and connect with them on common interests.
Company activities like happy hours, volunteering, or even a simple stop-and-chat in the hallway conversations can improve employee satisfaction and contribute to a positive work culture. Fostering this relationship with your employees can help tremendously when it comes time to give feedback and evaluate the team for promotion opportunities.
An Alternative to Working Remotely: Co-Working Spaces
While many people dream of working from home, coworking spaces provide the happy medium between working remotely and corporate work environments.
At Mac6, our coworking spaces offer the flexibility to work when you want with the amenities you’d find with top companies. Coworking spaces also allow for easy collaboration with team members with a positive community vibe.
Are you interested in bringing your team to a coworking space? Visit our website to learn more and set up a tour.