Obstacles for establishing a remote workforce

We have discussed the main benefits that the adoption of a remote-first culture can bring to your company as well as some practices to implement or get closer to this goal by adopting different tools and cultural change within the company. Now we are going to explore some of the main barriers companies face when adopting a remote-first approach.

Data security
Most of the services are US based, this raises questions in terms of the GDPR, the EU’s Data Protection Regulation. Where is the data stored? and how can I comply with this legislation?

The GDPR restricts transfers of personal data to countries outside the EEA. These restrictions apply to all transfers, no matter the size of the transfer or how often you carry them out.

Therefore, as long as the data is stored within the EU and not transferred outside the EU your company is GDPR compliant. However, it is important for you to check with your cloud infrastructure provider, for example, AWS, Azure or Google that the servers you use are located within the EU. In the case of AWS, there are different options such as (Ireland, France, Germany or Sweden, we would advise against choosing the UK server due to Brexit).

Infrastructure
Many companies have an intranet (a computer network for sharing information, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services only within an organization, and to the exclusion of access by outsiders to the organization where company resources are stored and accessed by employees). A remote-access VPN connection allows an individual user to connect to such a private network securely from a remote location using a laptop or desktop computer connected to the internet.

Equipment
If it is the first time that your workforce works outside the office and you use desktop computers, it might well be that some of your employees do not have the equipment to access or perform their tasks.

We would recommend asking employees to use their private equipment as with a VPN they could access company resources, besides, most of the tools for design, project management and communication have the possibility of being accessed via a browser.

Nevertheless, if you are committed to remote work we would recommend acquiring the equipment for your remote teams, especially if the current situation does not improve in the short-term.

External availability
In those cases where companies use a phone for being contacted by outside customers or consumers, we would suggest activating call forwarding to the person that usually takes those calls, if he/she does not have a company mobile number, kindly ask them if for the time being you could use their private number, until you have activated a company phone number for that person.

Now that we have discussed the main technical barriers to a company-wide remote strategy; infrastructure (VPN, data storage, internet connection) and hardware (mobile, laptop), we can now move on to more organisational, cultural barriers to remote work, some of these were already mentioned in our article “How to become a remote-first company”, here we just introduce some ideas to overcome those.

Another important aspect regarding communication is response times; one of the benefits highlighted in one of our articles is that people love remote because it gives them freedom, however, this freedom should not hamper productivity especially if it creates bottlenecks, therefore you should establish concrete answer times.

Trust
Another overlooked aspect of remote work is trust, especially with managers that are not used to working with a remote workforce are overly controlling, checking who is online or asking every hour whether there is something new. Instead, focus on creating an environment in which they are happy to perform and create. Otherwise, you will end up “burning them out” taking their motivation and reducing their performance.

Engagement
is often underestimated but is the glue that keeps your workforce together especially if you have some people or the full company working remotely. As a manager, you need to establish practices and methods to allow for the team to have fun and engage with one another

Even if you are working from home and do not have the day to day contact with your colleagues you can still create engaging activities to create a team culture. For this, we have established a 10-minute break call where everyone can speak about what they do (not necessarily work-related) to remain close, hear about each other and see how everyone is doing. This is known as water-cooler chats and only because we are not physically there, does not mean that they cannot happen. Here you can find a full article about creating a virtual “water cooler”.

Another way of increasing engagement is by doing off-sites where the team meets, plans and enjoy. This is crucial for remote only companies but may also be useful for companies that have some of its workforces always outside the office. In these get-togethers, people meet for the first time, do fun activities together as well as plan projects for the future, allowing new ideas to flow and people to create bonds.

Our take

These are only some of the barriers that we identify as “pressing”, and thus require to be resolved first to be able to establish a secure and productive remote workforce. Autark can assist your company overcoming these barriers, so if you have any doubts or questions on the matter, get in touch with us.

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