17 September 2024

During the recent pandemic, organisations were forced to consider remote working or working from home. In this article we discuss the benefits and challenges of remote working.

Benefits

  • Employee flexibility  – remote working can be an easy incentive for employers to adopt to aid staff retention. For some employees, the flexibility keeps them happy, engaged and demonstrates “give and take” in the employment relationship
  • Reduction in commuting – remote working saves time, cost and impact on the environment. This may make your workplace more attractive to potential employees who prefer some flexibility around their work and wish to lower their impact on the environment.
  • Productivity gains – studies show employees working from home are equally as productive as being in the office, and in some cases more productive. Encourage employees to save particular types of work that require extreme focus for their working from home days, so they can work without interruption and use the office for more collaborative work.
  • Reduce overheads – having employees working remotely can result in numerous cost savings for employers, such as less electricity and office supplies, and in some cases, employers can reduce commercial property and parking space.
  • Reduce absences – when employees are not feeling 100% but still want to work, they can work from home without spreading germs around the workplace. Similarly, if their children are home sick from school or daycare, the employee may still be able to work from home and not use their sick leave.

Challenges

  • Limits learning and development – during extended lockdown periods we found some junior team members were not developing their skills to the extent they had while in the office. The amount people can learn by themselves is limited; the best way to learn is a combination of self-driven learning and collaboration with others. Even colleagues with less experience may have knowledge or skills that others can learn from. Formal staff training is less collaborative when employees are not in the same location.
  • Slows down advancement for senior staff – while not in the office, senior employees are less involved in coaching or training others, and this may inhibit the development of their own skills.
  • Lack of team culture – the banter, after work drinks and impromptu chats at the water cooler are lost. Employees working the majority of their time at home may feel less connected to the organisation. Over the years, the most common aspect employees have told us that they enjoy about working at Nexia is the people. Employees may not feel the same about their workplace if they spend most of their time working from home.
  • IT security – consider whether your organisation requires multi factor authentication or a VPN (virtual private network). Ensure employees are using their home Wi-Fi and that it is secure.
  • Health & safety – consider whether workstations are set up adequately at home. Health and Safety is still the responsibility of the employer even when the employee is working from home. A robust remote working policy should be prepared with health and safety built in.
  • Legal – consider whether employment agreements need to be updated to include remote working.
  • Training and managing people – a final challenge is the ability to manage a team or train new employees when the manager or a number of more established employees are working remotely.

Talk to our experts

In our experience at Nexia, we have found that the ideal scenario is where employees are happy to adopt a mix of working from home and in the office. The split between the two depends on the role, level of experience, career aspirations, personality, and priorities.

We have found that having at least one day a week where everyone is in the office at once works really well for formal team training, internal meetings, and being together to connect and collaborate.

There is a lot to consider to ensure remote working is beneficial to both the organisation and the employee.

About Nexia New Zealand

Nexia is one of New Zealand’s best full service accounting and business advisory consultancy firms offering the full range of accounting, business advisory, tax, audit, and insolvency services.

Nexia New Zealand has four offices throughout New Zealand: Victoria Street in the Christchurch CBD, Albany on Auckland’s Northshore, Newmarket in the Auckland CBD and Hastings in Hawke’s Bay. We have specialist expert accounting and business advisory teams across a number of industries including rural business & agriculture, retail, franchising, medical, property, construction, hospitality and technology.

Nicola Pollard Nexia Auckland
Written by Nicola Pollard

Find updates