The shift to a more flexible, remote workforce has been happening throughout the past couple of years, but 2020 and COVID have caused a huge acceleration in this trend. In recent years, many companies have allowed more employees to work from home. In 2018, a U.S. Census Bureau survey found that just 5.3 percent of Americans worked from home full time. That number in 2020? 42%. Taking it even one step further, the pandemic lockdowns have shown businesses that their workers don’t all need to be in the same place at the same time in order to get the job done. Not only are they working from home, now they are working from just about anywhere.
Working From Anywhere = Benefits For All
The “work from anywhere” model has benefits on both sides. Workers get a flexible schedule and zero commute lifestyle, whereas businesses see a reduction in costs and the ability to expand their hiring network to just about anywhere. It can take the pressure off the need to hire within specific geographies and frees up time for hiring managers to work on more important company initiatives. Even large companies like Spotify and Salesforce have announced that they’re adapting a work from anywhere policy, even after the end of COVID restrictions.
While the pandemic has opened up a lot of companies’ minds to the idea of adopting WFA for all or part of their workforces, it comes with its own set of challenges. Just like work from home, work from anywhere means you now have your talent spread out over different locations; a logistical challenge for sure. This means that in the not-so-distant future, some employees could work from an office, some from home, and some from wherever they want. If this work from anywhere culture is going to become more permanent, companies need to think through how they assign work and oversee this new type of workforce.
Technology Will Connect Us All
Technology has made it possible for all of us to work remotely this past year by connecting through Zoom meetings, digital chats, and project organization platforms. Now, companies need to turn to technology for a new reason – managing and paying this flexible, remote team. If you have a workforce where some people work full-time, some part-time, and some freelance, you’re going to need a way to properly classify, assign work, oversee progress, and issue payments to everyone. That’s no small feat.
A Workforce Management Platform can streamline all of these manual processes and provide managers with one system of record for their entire workforce. Having a formal system of record in place means you’ll be able to keep track of this flexible workforce and have more visibility into who your workers are and the projects they’re working on. It also lets you track tax forms and reduce risk by making sure workers are correctly classified and paid on time.
Switching from an old, outdated process with manual methods for managing your workforce to streamlining and automating working with them with one end-to-end system means you’ll:
- Organize schedules and project all in one place
- Get access to real-time data collection
- Stay compliant with national and local laws
- Increase efficiency and save significant admin time
Without these defined standards and processes in place, management teams will end up burdened by admin and payment tasks when managing this new work from anywhere workforce. For any business that plans to adapt to this new Future of Work and wants to unlock the full potential of their workforce, a Workforce Management System will be essential.