The pandemic has brought a paradigm shift in the existing day-to-day life. For many people, going to the office is a regular daily task. However, the lockdown and social distancing across the globe have forced many companies to shift their work hours to online. And with that, remote working became the new normal. So, what is remote working? What are the advantages and disadvantages of remote working? Let's find out. What is remote working? Remote working is a working process outside of the traditional office space under a fixed time regulation. It doesn’t have to follow a traditional 9 to 5 routine. The concept came as part of the idea that work doesn’t have to be bound to the traditional workspace. Rather, with proper delegation, it can be done from anywhere. Even from the comfort of one’s own home. Read Best Job Searching Websites in Bangladesh The concept of remote working is not new. The idea got developed through freelancing. Now on a global scale, some freelancers are offering their service remotely in different sectors from the comfort of their homes. You don’t have to be in the same city or country even, the total process gets delegated online. This not only saves the extra hassle of work commute but also ensures ease of task completion. However, working remotely is gaining more popularity as the world has been forced to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic situations. Read: Making a Perfect Video Resume: Tips and Tricks Pros of remote working Better productivity A number of studies found that people working from home tend to have better productivity. There are several reasons behind it. Working from home liberates a person from the traditional work hour regime. One of the key advantages of remote working are the lack of office distractions. You can set up your own workstation in your home and work without any unnecessary interference. This helps to boost productivity as well as work concentration. Since there are no fixed office hours, you can work as per your wish, at the time of your choice. As long as you are finishing tasks and meeting deadlines, there shouldn’t be any problem. Read: Writing a Perfect Cover Letter: Important Factors to Consider Work-Life balance Many people working 9 to 5 complain that they don’t have any work-life balance. Whether it's missing out on important events in their child’s life to being distant from family. The usual work routine makes it difficult to maintain a healthy social life. But if you are working remotely, you get to spend more time with your family compared to the regular office schedule. You can start by saving time on the commute alone. On top of that, the flexibility of choosing work hours makes it easy to prioritize family and maintain a better work-life balance. Read How to ace a Job Interview? Employee experience Many businesses fail to understand that the employees are the main asset, not the product itself. If a company takes good care of its employees, the employees will take better care of the company or business. Remote working helps to boost the employee experience. We have already mentioned how working from home helps to boost employee morale. Ensuring optimum employee satisfaction will help to further drive employee performance. Employee appraisal gets determined by performance. And if working from home helps to boost performance, it’s definitely preferable compared to a normal in-person office routine. Read: How to find your passion for a more fulfilling career? Employee retention In this day and age, employee retention is becoming increasingly tough for businesses. Study shows of over 84% of prospective employees will choose a workplace that provides some form of work from home opportunities compared to full-time office opportunities. Some 74% of the employees are ready to leave their current job for a work-from-home opportunity given the same salary structure. As more and more companies get adjusted to the new normal, it’s easy to see that employee retention becomes much easier with work-from-home opportunities. Read Considering a Career Change? 10 Questions to Ask Yourself Decreased business and infrastructural cost There's obviously associated cost with running an office. From rent to bills to hiring office assistants, an organization has to spend a considerable sum to keep an office running. But if the majority of the employees undertakes work from home opportunities, the associated cost can be minimized greatly. In fact, an organization can save a good amount of money per employee just by shifting them to a remote work scenario. Read: Things to Consider When Choosing an Internship Cons of remote working Hands-on experience Most of the offices use hands-on training opportunities to familiarize the recruits with the office process. However, with remote work, this opportunity becomes increasingly difficult to undertake. The lack of face-to-face meetings makes managers skeptical about the work performance of the employees. The lack of training also has a negative impact on the performance of the recruits. Read Traits of the Smartest and Most Efficient Employees Access to information In addition to hands-on training, every office has a proper onboarding process. It basically entails how the office structure is, how information can be accessed, and the overall process and procedures. With remote working, the onboarding process gets handicapped. An average employee spends more than 30% of their work hour searching for information. Needless to say, the number is much higher in the case of remote workers. Read: Pandemic, Remote Working & Procrastination: How to avoid procrastination when working from home? Collaboration Office works are mostly a team effort. Even though you are individually responsible for your performance, the coherence and interdependence make office environments vibrant and motivated towards a collective organizational goal. With remote work, this collaborative behavior is hampered. The online meetings are limited to work-related matters only with a limited scope of informal interaction. As a result, the organizational coherence might be lost and it might cause disjointed behavior among the employees. Read Perfect Resume: 12 Effective Tips for writing a professional CV Bottom Line Whether by choice or by force, most offices got forced to rework their office works during the pandemic. It's safe to say that the pros of remote working outweigh the cons greatly. But as the world battles out the Covid-19, many offices are returning to their usual physical office structures. While in most cases, it’s looked up as a positive aspect for the offices. What's left to see is whether there is actually an improvement from what’s achieved through remote work? Read: Best Ways to Lead Effective Team Meetings

​​​​​​​The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped our life in a way we never expected. From social distancing to work from home, there has been a lot of change. For working people, the change in the usual schedule has been drastic. All of a sudden you get to do your usual job from the comfort of your home. Many people say that they love working from home and it boosts their productivity. But, it might also make way for increased procrastination. So how does procrastination affect your productivity? And how can you stop procrastinating? Let's find out. How procrastination reduces work performance and potentials? Procrastination is nothing but the idea of putting off things until the last minute. It might seem harmless at first glance but the problem occurs when it becomes a habit. A study showed that 20% of the procrastinators are chronic procrastinators, which means, they can't help but procrastinate. It's hard to pinpoint why people procrastinate. It can be lack of interest, lack of understanding, passive-aggressiveness, or simply momentary pleasure derived from holding off. However, the effect and implications are severe in the long run. Read How to Restart Your Career after a Break? As a procrastinator, you are losing your valuable work hours. It can only indulge you in unproductive work doing nothing significant. The realization of lost time often puts people into depression, which simply lengthens the procrastination phase. Procrastination also makes people lose opportunities. It is always about what could have been for them as they never take the initiative with the opportunities at hand. Procrastinator also fails to manage their work responsibilities. Leaving everything for the last-minute leads to piles up work resulting in missed deadlines. This is a serious block to professional growth. Read What makes a Great Manager: Know the Qualities and Skills Procrastination not only ruins your career, but it also implicates that there won't be any significant change in your life. It is like a cycle of unproductive behavior which reduces and ultimately diminishes personal will in the long run. Ways to stop procrastination while remote working Setup daily goals Procrastination is all about not being able to get anything done. As a result, a daily goal list can be a useful step in the right direction. Try to define daily goals or to-do list the night before every working day. Make the list small and realistic. Rather than pondering over anything the next day, start checking the list off. You will see a significant boost in confidence every time you check off a point. It will uplift your mood as well as productivity. Read Traits of the Smartest and Most Efficient Employees Don’t multitask One of the the common misconception is that multitasking makes you more productive. While multitasking reduces the time of actual work, it compromises the quality of the work in the process. It is also something that will simply push you towards procrastination. Instead of multitasking, you can simply focus on one work at a time. A single task will be hardly overwhelming as you are not required to juggle between many tasks. Thus, working through focusing task by task can increase your performance and work quality. Read How to improve your productivity and efficiency at Work?