In today’s digital world, remote working has become increasingly more popular. With the advent of COVID-19, many countries have witnessed inflation, leading to a high cost of living. For most workers, the pandemic has significantly depended on the question; can I work from home or the workplace?

Now, well into the pandemic, the limitations and the benefits of working from home cannot be overemphasized. Remote work has many benefits, such as setting your own hours and work limits. On the other hand, you should be ready for the challenges, not to take you off guard.

Here at Remote 42, the standards of freelancers are our foremost priority. Hence, we have compiled this article to explain the five challenges of remote working. In addition, if you’re struggling to manage time, communicate, and strike a balance between your office work and remote working, we’ve got you covered.

It’s not hard to know why working remotely is beneficial. No frustrating commute, no miserably packed lunchbox, and in fact, there’s no hovering office manager to monitor you. And for these facts, remote work has seen a 91% increase in popularity in recent years. Without further ado, below are the 5 challenges of remote working.

1.    Time Management

Undoubtedly, you might have trouble managing time if you’re working remotely. This is because; many distractions, including laundry, dishes, and maybe your siblings, could get you sidetracked. If you’re ambitious, you can use different tracking software to allow you to log the time spent on a project.

While this could be a greater challenge in achieving your goals, it’s better to schedule a time you can stick to. Or do you tend to spend about five hours on Facebook when you have a deadline looming? Of course, that’d sound like a NO if you don’t want to be fired by your employer. So, adjust to your timing.

2.    No Team Communication

When you’re not in the flow of office routine, you’ll definitely miss impromptu lunches, meetings, and even spontaneous desk-side brainstorms among your team members. Oh, did I hear you scream NO! Or do you think communicating via platforms like Zoom, Skype, and others is the best way to brainstorm?

Of course, not seeing your colleagues might have you feeling incomplete or not getting the complete picture of what’s happening around you. More so, you can easily say yes in a situation that warrants critical thinking and brainstorming before deciding what could work better.

3.    Overworking

Overworking seems to be among the reasons why many employers decline the offer of remote work. Imagine when your personal life and workplace are under one roof; how’d you feel, happy right? Yes, and that’s what led to overworking because you can easily sleep and get back to work as you wish.

However, you might ask yourself when the workday starts and ends because you didn’t follow anyone. While your colleagues sleep at night, you can be awake overworking to earn more. To work is fine, but to overwork could get you resigned when your employer can’t afford to pay your bills.

Few Ways to Avoid Overworking

• Set appointments and schedule the time off work
• Put reminders in your schedule to take breaks
• Create physical boundaries to avoid distractions in your workplace
• Turn off notifications and be transparent with your team on when you’re leaving

4.    Maintaining Trust

Another challenge that a remote worker could encounter is building and maintaining trust among the small teams. In some cases, team members may have never met each other, which could bring all kinds of subconscious and suspicious acts from the members. Besides, an excellent way to solve this problem is to know each other, promote transparency, get the right collaboration tools, and create shared goals.

In addition, to make this process work better, you can get the right collaboration tools. Again, avoid mismanagement, and lead by example. This, in the long run, can help to incentivize your team members with positive feedbacks and regard for hitting targets.

5.    Loneliness and Staying Motivated

As reported by many remote workers, staying motivated and lonely is another challenge. Of course, without the presence of a supervisor or manager, getting things done on time can be difficult. And for the fact that there’s less pressure, workers can miss out on meeting their stated deadlines.

On the flip side, Buffer report that loneliness has affected many remote workers to put in their best in achieving daily objectives. Meanwhile, lack of motivation from co-members of a group contributes to making you weaker than average. This way, find something that motivates you to overcome the challenge.

Conclusion

Remote working brings a lot of benefits to the table. In spite of that, you need to be disciplined to maintain a certain level of productivity. Now, the rest is up to you to find the thing that’d motivate you to create a thriving remote-workplace culture. Nonetheless, refer to this platform for tips and guides and overcome your challenges of remote working.

Want to increase your number of remote projects? Check out the Get Certified page.