Business outsourcing has come a long way in changing business operations. Constant changes occur creating remote work trends. These trends happen as companies try to overcome obstacles and promote better management, collaboration, and productivity to ultimately attain success and growth for the business.
This blog discusses the future of remote work based on the previous and current trends—and how Magic’s virtual assistant services can help businesses transition to a remote work setup.
The History of Remote Work
Business outsourcing has evolved to address issues or problems that occur along the way. Understanding remote work trends from past to present can give great insight into how they will affect the remote workforce in the future.
In the Past…
Remote work was traditionally looked on in a bad light because many business owners thought working at home would be more distracting than productive. Ten years ago, employers believed that managers should be able to monitor employees and their reports for them to be productive. As such, businesses rarely allowed remote work.
At Present…
Alongside widespread resignations, employees have been pushing for higher pay and better working conditions, including options for remote work. In response, some employers have increased wages and offered signing bonuses and other perks to entice workers. As the health crisis wanes, more workers will likely resume their jobs or hunt for new ones. However, workers still have considerable bargaining power this year.
Moreover, more employees now prefer a work-from-home setup compared to the office. Aside from saving on commuting time and costs, they can also spend their free time with kids, preparing meals, or attending to other household chores. The preference for remote work is strong enough that it’s a major factor behind people resigning and how they choose the jobs they later accept.
Advances in technology have enabled some businesses to thrive in using remote teams. To cite an example, Google updated G Suite into Workspace to enable better control and organization. This update allows you to secure data and documents and collaborate with your team effectively wherever you are. More companies offering collaboration tools are also making innovations to provide faster and better results for remote workers and virtual assistants.
Due to these developments, business outsourcing became more acceptable for those who prefer a work-from-home setup. However, business owners also allowed employees to do remote work for up to two days a week for employees who would like to do the hybrid model.
The Future…
Remote working can help limit the spread of illnesses including Covid-19. By working from home, employees can avoid being exposed to the Covid virus.
With these developments, Adam Ozimek, a labor economist at Upwork argues that remote working will transform economies. This means that more companies will change policies to address fully remote work transitions. As employees become fully remote, they will likely move to more remote but ideal locations for them. The future remote workforce will use remote working tools that are better than the versions remote workers and virtual assistants are using now. Lastly, economic geography can also change since remote workers can now work wherever they want to live. Unlike the times when they had to be near their offices.
What are the trends related to remote work and business outsourcing that will change the future of the workforce?
Some companies, like Google and Magic, have transitioned to a fully remote working environment. With companies getting benefits from the remote work setup, employing experienced virtual assistants will no doubt be gaining more support. It allows your business to reap benefits like saving on costs, etc. In addition, it enables you to ultimately achieve your business goals, which include growing your business and earning profits. Not to mention you’ll be listening to what many virtual assistants want to do – work from home.
Hiring virtual assistants and on-demand remote workers is poised to become the primary source of business outsourcing, which has constantly risen through the years. Business outsourcing aims to reduce costs for your business by transferring some business work to external service providers. As such, hiring virtual assistants and remote workers to cater to specific outsourcing needs is increasing more than ever.
Here are the top ten remote work trends that will most likely influence business outsourcing in the coming years:
1. Remote Work Preference
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused dramatic changes in the remote workforce and business outsourcing industry. At the pandemic’s onset, businesses had to cut costs, restructure, and immediately transition to virtual and digital environments.
This trend is likely to continue throughout 2022 as many virtual assistants and remote workers prefer the work-from-home setup. What’s more, business owners see how beneficial it is for the business so more companies are more open to going fully remote. This will enable a geographically dispersed workforce, which can provide functional expertise and overall greater support for businesses.
2. Cloud-Based Technology
There’s an increase in the demand for cloud-based technology. Predictions show that this is one of the remote work trends that will boom, especially since many companies are migrating to the cloud and stand to benefit from better cloud-related strategies.
As authorized users of cloud-based applications, you and your virtual assistants can easily and quickly access data and files. Using this technology also incurs lower maintenance costs since you don’t have to purchase traditional hardware for storing data.
3. Demand for Global Teams
Many countries closed borders following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. This resulted in transitioning to remote working and outsourcing to virtual assistants from any part of the world to sustain operations.
Seeing that remote work offers great benefits to business owners, this will remain a trend for the unforeseeable future.
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4. Focus on Strategic Partnerships
With mounting evidence for increased productivity in remote work setups, business outsourcing of virtual assistants will be among the remote work trends that persist into the near future. With this, there’s some focus on strategic partnerships. This can involve sharing more with remote workers including more aspects of the decision-making process and support services whenever possible.
Also, unlike the traditional administrative assistant, they take on other operations including strategic planning, risk assessment and management, and others. This is to keep everyone involved in the loop and to make processes and goals more transparent and understandable. After all, you can contribute more ideas if you know what needs to be achieved.
5. Remote Work Tools will Measure and Improve Performance
Under remote work conditions, managers evaluate workers’ performance based on results rather than merely perceived productivity. With the help of remote work tools like Slack, G Suite, and Calendar, managers can easily and accurately track task completion.
Since more employees prefer working at home and more companies are transitioning to fully remote work or the hybrid model, this trend is most likely to go on for the foreseeable future.
To facilitate better collaboration and communication, businesses use remote work tools. This way, a manager can adjust interactions to improve the quality of meetings and the performance of employees.
6. Emphasis on Cybersecurity
Businesses turning to digitization and technology require working with sensitive data that need to be secured at all times. As one of the remote work trends, cybersecurity will continue moving forward, especially since cybercrime increased by 600% in 2020.
This is important to protect companies’ and customers’ information against identity theft and phishing scams. Many business outsourcing companies adopt multi-level security such as multi-factor authentication to prevent security breaches
7. Industry Specialization
More applications and technological forms are developed and are needed to be managed well to produce favorable results for the business. As such, business outsourcing for IT and eCommerce experts is increasing.
In fact, many businesses have realized that outsourcing IT services can afford benefits over hosting such roles in-house. It includes deeper insight and expertise, proper training, and the proper adaptation of tools.
8. Progressive Web Apps
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are becoming more widely used to run business operations. They allow businesses to run operations for a mobile application and a website. Using this technology is one of the remote work trends as research estimates its monetary value to reach $01.77 billion in 2027. This is because PWAs enable integration tools to be more efficient, user-friendly, and compatible with many devices.
PWAs are more convenient for users as they’re compatible with any device and can perform well even in cases of relatively poor network connectivity. Businesses like them since they help them solve loading speed issues. Also, you can save the home page to your home screen without having to download or install any app.
PWAs enhance integration tool functionalities. For remote work, this is a definite advantage in ensuring a smooth flow of work. Not to mention more efficient and seamless integration of tools with applications.
9. DE&I Intervention Needed in the Hybrid World
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) need intervention for the hybrid world to function better. Managers believe that workers working at the office perform better and have better chances of getting promoted compared to those on a hybrid schedule. However, a hybrid work model will be one of the remote work trends since there are many benefits from this setup. More employees and employers prefer this work model at the very least. Plus, executive and mid-level employees who are needed at the office can enter a few days a week and work from home the rest of the week.
As such, proper intervention must be done so managers give fair considerations and performance evaluations to all hybrid and office employees. Gartner’s analysis of employee performance shows signs of positive changes trending.
If the surrounding circumstances of this trend get proper intervention, women and employees of color would choose hybrid rather than work from home, especially when compared to white men. Career growth and opportunities for all would also grow as more traditional leaderships weaken.
10. Fairness and Equity For Organizations
Remote working and hiring virtual assistants will remain a trend even after the Covid-19 pandemic. Today, more companies pay more to new hires. However, old employees are not getting raises. In line with this, there is a need to ensure fairness and equity in the virtual workplace. Gartner’s HR research provides great advice on how to create a more fair experience for employees. On a positive note, this could be a top priority for human resources by 2023.
How can Magic help businesses transition to a remote work setup?
By incorporating remote work trends, Magic aims to be the go-to virtual assistant services provider that enables business owners to effectively and efficiently manage remote teams. This way, we can provide better remote working tools and apps to make seamless transactions between you and your virtual assistants. Constant and updated cybersecurity tools and programs are also used to keep all data secure. Paid collaboration and communication tools are also invested to achieve efficiency and productivity.
Magic virtual assistants do not only accomplish data entry and administrative work. They can also cover research, marketing, calendar management, and other recurring tasks.
To help you transition to a remote setup, we offer a client portal. This collaboration tool enables you to manage your remote team of virtual assistants effortlessly. Once we’ve matched you with the right VA, we take care of the onboarding process so you can just get started whenever you need them to do tasks for you.
For more information about how to move your business to remote working, read our ultimate guide. It discusses the benefits and downsides of going fully remote. Lastly, you’ll see some suggested remote working tools that will promote efficiency and easy collaboration.
On the whole, knowing the remote work trends and understanding how they affect business outsourcing and the workforce of tomorrow should help you to make proper adjustments, wherever it is needed. After all, you’d want to create a productive and successful virtual environment for your remote team. For any virtual assistant tasks to outsource, contact Magic. Get started today!
