Remote Work; The CEO Perpsective

We questioned 500 CEOs on their biggest challenge in managing the sudden, covid enforced transition to remote work.  We were so bowled over by the volume, breadth and depth of responses that we pulled them together to create a whitepaper: Remote Work; The CEO PerspectiveYou can download a free copy here.

Key Challenges for Businesses Working Remotely

Remote Work; The CEO Perspective generated more responses and more indepth answers than we’ve seen before in our surveys – CEOs most certainly had a lot to say about remote work, Covid19, the Government and Media handling of the crisis, and the challenges businesses are facing.   And much of it wasn’t positive –  businesses are, unsurprisingly, really struggling.

That’s why we’ve launched RemoteWork360, to bring together resources, guidance, insight, tools, technologies and education to help businesses navigate these difficult times and manage their remote workforces effectively.  In particular, RW360 will include guidance and education for the many businesses that are likely to transition to “remote-friendly” or partially remote, rather than fully remote.  Hybrid remote businesses will have a whole host of different issues and challenges to navigate, as they seek to ensure they gain the benefits of both, not the disadvantages of both.

In our survey, we also benchmarked the proportion of workers operating remotely – before covid, currently and projected in 12 months’ time.  Pre-covid, only 13% of workers were operating remotely to some degree but businesses indicated they anticipate this will have more than doubled, to 30%, 12 months from now.  It’s currently sitting around 50% – but this is likely much higher if you discount manufacturing and businesses which simply can’t operate remotely.

The Top Concern for CEOs About Remote Work?  Managing Culture

We asked CEOs to rank their key challenges in operating remotely – and maintaining culture came out as the top concern with 60% of respondents’ votes, closely followed by enabling effective collaboration and communication.

For businesses used to being together in an office-based environment, covid19 has certainly thrown a real curve-ball in terms of how we continue to perpetuate a business’ values and identity, how to keep staff connected, engaged and feeling part of a team.  The potential knock-on effect of failing to do so effectively – if you lose that sense of connection and trust, if a company’s values are no longer being perpetuated actively and so no longer resonate with you – is that employees will seek work elsewhere, so the impact of not protecting and nurturing culture will likely feed into recruitment and retention challenges, in time.

To find out what other challenges CEOs are tackling and to read what they felt was important in managing remotely effectively – download the whitepaper here.

 

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White Paper DownloadRemote Work: The CEO Perspective

Read invaluable insights into how businesses are managing the sudden increase in remote working, catalysed by Covid19