Challenges Faced while Working Remotely, and How to Overcome them

Working remotely appeals to many people for a variety of reasons, including the freedom to do so from a comfortable location, increased savings, improved work-life balance, commute-free living, and more. This model has benefits, but it also has drawbacks that could impede your advancement.

The good news is that you can overcome any obstacles that arise as you grow in your employment role with the appropriate methods and resources. To help you on your journey to a successful remote profession, let’s look at some typical obstacles and how to overcome them.

Managing projects

Jean Will, founder of bridesmaid brand Cicinia, “Starting at the top, managing projects while your team is dispersed across several places is the largest problem with remote working. Managers ensure that deadlines and goals are accomplished, regardless of whether there is a mix of on-site and remote employees or a team composed of remote workers.

Communication is more challenging than keeping track of individual activities when there is no physical presence, especially for large teams and complex projects.

Fortunately, there are tools for almost every difficulty a remote team manager might run through. To assign tasks and monitor progress, you’ll need project management software most of all.

Asana is the best team management software available if you require anything more sophisticated than Monday.com. It provides a deeper degree of team administration tools, including sophisticated permissions, team-specific pages, and the capacity for a task, project, and team-level communication.

Since these platforms are excellent possibilities, many others on the market, such as Trello, are made for teams with less demanding requirements.”

Prioritizing work:

Abe Breuer, co-founder of VIP To Go does not recommend remote work but gives the following advice: “Because no one is always watching over our work or managing our time for us, remote workers need to be highly motivated and skilled time managers.

While managing a calendar and to-do list can be demanding for any employee, remote workers with more flexible, free-form schedules and managers from abroad sometimes find it particularly onerous.

Running your own business is difficult enough. The continual desire to clean the kitchen while delaying a project, watch an episode of your favorite show during your work break or walk your dog because the weather’s nice can make things difficult.

Don’t take on more than you can handle each day. Use the Eisenhower matrix to identify the next things to do and to steer clear of time-wasting activities. Alternatively, follow the 1-3-5 rule by only doing 1 major task, 3 intermediate tasks, and 5 little tasks per day.

Manage your energy instead of your time, as well. You get better when you practice hard and don’t push yourself when you’re tired.”

Working from different locations and time zones:

Isla Sibanda, owner of Privacy Australia believes; “Hiring people from around the world is one of the biggest liberties that remote working offers firms. The drawback is that a lot of this talent may work in several time zones, which could throw your team’s schedule out of whack.

Some members of your team can be sleeping while others are working on tasks on the opposite side of the globe.

There are no promises that everyone will be available when you need them when you factor in this plus the freedom that remote working allows your team members (they might have to or prefer to work in the evenings, for example).

The greatest solution to this issue is to set up some rules for your team members. You don’t want to start restricting the liberties that remote work offers, but if productivity is to be reached, there needs to be some sort of balance.

The important players on your team should ideally have a pretty regular schedule. As long as they are consistent and choose to work at regular intervals, you can usually anticipate when they will be accessible again.

You normally want to know who will be accessible (and when) every week, whether they choose to set aside specific hours each week or arrange availability time for the coming week.”

Building/maintaining trust:

Remote writer and owner of Raincatcher, Sam Willis states the following: “When you can physically observe what individuals are doing, there are apparent trust difficulties that might develop among remote teams.

When team members have never really met, it might have a variety of subliminal consequences on their ability to trust one another.

We’ve already looked at several tools that can help with some of these problems, such as the project management tools that track progress and the Status Hero tool that helps team managers understand what the team members are working on.

There are, however, several other actions you can do to develop and preserve trust among your entire workforce.

The ironic thing about trust is that it requires a leap of faith, which necessitates allowing others the flexibility to demonstrate their reliability.

Additionally, it is beneficial to motivate team members with common objectives, encouraging remarks, and prizes for achieving goals and making any necessary compromises.

The advantages of working remotely are numerous. You may somewhat establish your hours, complete chores during the day, and stay away from all office distractions.

The advice in this article should be used by team leaders, remote workers, independent contractors, and business owners to maintain motivation and productivity while lowering the danger of burnout.

However, there are also certain drawbacks, three of which are highlighted here. The less probable it is that you will encounter these difficulties and the better experience you will have, the more proactive you can be in addressing these concerns.”