If you go back two or so years ago to March 2020, you had the global pandemic forcing everyone in finance to work outside of the office. More and more people in the finance and treasury fields started working from their homes. UK treasury jobs is one of the key focuses of The Treasury Recruitment Company.
However, since things have cooled down and since restrictions have gradually been lifted, more and more workforce are getting back to the office. A lot of departments are adopting a more hybrid approach giving their employees greater flexibility.
For many though, the shift to remote work is bound to be a permanent change.
There was a survey conducted by vendor FIS. This survey found that as many as 2/3rds of those questioned about the department’s shift to remote work believed that most of the work could be easily performed outside of the office.
While there was certainly expected to be a lot of people that thought this, the high number was certainly surprising.
However, it shouldn’t be given the advancements in technology over the last decade or so. If you asked the same people 10 years prior, those responses would have been wildly different. No one in the treasury department would have been able to perform their job duties remotely.
The pandemic happened to occur after a digital boom. The shift to digital work was already taking hold and it only sped up with the global pandemic shutting everything down. This made a lot of companies and governments shift to a remote work setup before they may have been inclined to do so. With the advancement in tech and with cloud-based technology being so fleshed out, it’s possible to work effectively remotely.
There are a lot of benefits that come with remote work. However, there are still a lot of challenges that it presents too.
People respond to working from home in different ways.
For instance, those who are more extroverts are likely not going to enjoy it. They miss the social interaction they get with the office. In an office environment, you are constantly seeing your coworkers and having interactions with them.
However, many employees may be even more productive when they are outside of the office. The office can be a very stimulating and distracting place. Some thrive being in their cocoon and away from the hustle and bustle of the office environment.
It gets even more difficult if you have children. This is especially true if you have children who are also having to go to school virtually from home or who are on holiday.
For a lot of people, the commute is a time to unwind and relax. Whether you enjoy reading during your commute, listening to music, or some other activity. It makes for a good time to decompress and to get away from your personal and work troubles. It can help you get your head right.
This is one of the issues with working remotely. It forces you to have everything mixed. There’s no physical separation. Everything is merged. It can be difficult to have a work and life balance when you are working and living from home.
I remember during the early days of the pandemic when I would get out of bed and shower only to sit down and start working on my office job. Then, I would head over to my kitchen, have my lunch, and get back to work. Things became much more blurred than I was used to.
There was a Treasurer that I have a relationship with who discussed his time working remotely during the early stages of the pandemic. He noted that his team had done very well during the pandemic. They finished tasks, reimplemented a new system, and even received awards. He was bragging about how well the team was doing. The issue is, that he had his head in the sand.
Two members of his team that were registered with us had become so stressed out throughout the entirety of the pandemic. They were finding it increasingly difficult to juggle their home life with their work life. They had kids that were homeschooling and they had a lot of other pressure building making things very stressful. He simply didn’t notice that they were struggling.
This brings up the next challenge – effectively managing a team remotely. As you can tell from the example above, it’s not as easy as it seems.
It can be difficult to figure out how everyone is doing when you don’t see them outside of a screen. A lot of people will bottle things up and avoid expressing themselves on video.
So, as you can see, the technology is certainly there for working remotely. However, that doesn’t mean it’s the best way. It doesn’t necessarily mean we should have to.