With a little under half the US labor force working from home during 2021, it certainly seems like remote working has become a big a part of our ‘new normal’.
As the infographic compiled by TrackTime24 below shows, most work-from-home (WFH) employees report being happy with the situation. However, it has caused many employers to have trust issues with their work force. This has led to some employers attempting to micromanage their employees during working hours, which in turn has disgruntled many of the WFH employees.
Work From Home Trust Issues
The research by TrackTime24 discovered 85% of employers have doubts regarding their leadership pipelines. Add on top of that the 69% of managers who feel uncomfortable communicating with employees via the various technologies available to do so while remote working, and it is easy to see why there are trust issues.
Even 48% of employees recognize that there have been changes in the levels of trust since the pandemic. Now one in five employees believe micromanagement from employers, either in the form of excessive control or an over-attention to detail, is the most stressful aspect of working from home.
Small Business Benefits of Remote Working
With 54% of WFH employees wanting to keep remote working post-Covid, small businesses need to overcome these trust issues. Finding the right balance to keep both the employer and employees happy can reap great rewards.
The research showed WFH employers saved $22,000 a year per fulltime WFH employee, and $11,000 per year for a halftime WFH employee. That created a total of $700 billion in national savings in a single year.
The key to finding the right balance appears to a combination of communication and openness to employees’ needs, as well as work culture changes such as valuing productivity and output over hours worked.
Image: tracktime24
Trust is big in any working relationship. However, in the past managers were able to calm their anxieties by being able to see someone at their desk/in a meeting and feel better about how they were doing. Now they don’t have that security blanket and they need other methods for assessing how people are doing. The old “butts in seats” wasn’t really effective, but it made bosses feel good. It’s time for managers to change and grow, along with employees being better at communicating/indicating that they’re worthy of that trust.