Top 5 Mistakes of Employers when Interacting with Remote Workers

As the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry is almost entirely digital, it offers vast potential for remote labour. About 61% of employees prefer being fully remote, and 74% of professionals want remote work to become standard, according to Forbes.

Distributed ledger tech (DLT) can transform government, healthcare and life sciences, retail and consumer goods, financial and banking services, media and entertainment, telecommunications, insurance, automotive, and personal identity security, and other sectors.

Blockchain is paving the way for the future

Several top Blockchain firms including IBM (invested over $200M in blockchain research and development), BRD, BitMEX, Netki, Spring Labs, SALT Lending, Mythical Games, Gemini, Circle, Coinbase, Chronicled, Voatz, Steem, Shipchain, etc., are seriously seeking for remote employees to work under various categories such as product management, UX/UI design, marketing and PR, engineering and technology, customer services, community management, and many others. Generally, blockchain and crypto-asset firms are open to remote workers and highly espouse this drift in employment. It's only a few companies including Yahoo, Reddit, that have barred remote work.

Since the coming of the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of Americans started working remotely to avoid the spreading of the deadly coronavirus. For instance, a new Gallup discovered that in April 2020, about 52% of the US adult employees reported always working remotely, but the number later reduced in September to 33% (up to today) after most of the restrictions were lifted. The percentage of overall Americans reporting "sometimes" working remotely between April last year to January 2021 has ranged from 18% to 23%.

There is absolutely no doubt that remote work presents some unmatched advantages such as lowering the cost of living by working in a cheap city or any nation with low or affordable costs of living, time flexibility and more freedom, less stress because of low commute times, high productivity, better work-life balance, and many more.

Besides the advantages offered by remote working, it is more difficult for managers to manage remote workers. It is easier to manage workers in the same office(s) than remotely, and this has resulted in mistakes that cause a decline in morale and productivity. These are the top 5 mistakes employers make when interacting with remote workers or switching to remote work.

Leaving in the extreme

Traditionally, many people love visiting and working from their offices from time to time, play and communicate with their workmates physically and even attend physical meetings in person. There are hybrid models where some employees come to work from the offices while others remain and work online from home or in a different country. So, these remote employees who fully work away from the offices often feel disconnected from the rest of the team or department that remains in the office.

The benefits of saving on rent and office equipment will eventually disappear if jobs start to be uncompleted in time or stand idle. 

Savings on salary

Remotes from particular regions of the world are paid less money or salary than the other, and this tends to demotivate employees especially when they get to know how much other workers doing the same job in the same company earn. It also leads to the degenerating reputation of the HR brand, as well as increased flowing. 

If companies want to maintain their status as attractive employers, they should pay specialists the same, otherwise valuable personnel will be lost to other competitors who don’t save on the money paid to remote professionals.

Not providing the right tools

Remote workers are required to be given the same tools - such as computers, smartphone, office supplies, etc. - from the employer as any other worker working from the company’s office. This will help to get the job done effectively in time. Hence, remote workers end up incurring losses because they need to purchase such tools by themselves to get things done.

Too many online meetings

It is very hard to complete remote work without online communications with other workmates or employers - current issues have to be discussed. However, these endless online chats and meetings tend to reduce the time for work tasks, tire employees and end up becoming useless. Some employees are taken up by uncontrollable social media engagements, a thing that consumes up time dedicated for work.

Not getting to know each other personally

People who sit and work together in the office tend to learn and get to know each other on a personal basis. They tend to learn each other’s interests and frustrations, discover their strengths and weaknesses, meet their friends and family, and all these things help them to build trust and rapport on the team, which is not the case with remote team members.

Nevertheless, DLT has the potential to help in replicating online the security, efficiency, peace of mind, interactions, and trust that workers used to have within physical engagements with the employers, employees while at offices or any place of work.