TRENTON, NJ — Gov. Phil Murphy, after undergoing his own self-quarantine due to possible COVID-19 exposure, has encouraged New Jersey communities to wear not one mask or face covering — but two face masks.
Considering that businesses and employees have been under rigorous pandemic restrictions since March of 2020, it seems as though these sorts of limitations are either not going to be lifted any time soon, or even possibly something that businesses and employees are going to have to respond to continuously.
Businesses are responding to continuous pandemic disruptions by shifting to digital and contact-free operational procedures at every level. Murphy himself shifted his own press conference from in-person to virtual “Out of an abundance of caution.”
Businesses and organizations are often conducting operational meetings virtually as well, and have been doing so since March of 2020 in order to limit COVID-19 exposure and possible spreading of the virus.
Timothy Schuster, senior manager of Top 100 Firm EisnerAmper’s Private Business Services Group has gone on record identifying challenges that businesses face as they switch to contactless operations.
“Switching to a predominantly remote work force is no simple task,” says Schuster. “One of the most important matters now, more than ever, is constant communication with colleagues and clients. Technology has helped … but it also comes with some challenges.”
Some of those challenges include communication, accounting, shifts in employee productivity as employees pivot to working from home instead of working at offices, and more.
Remote work has its problems for businesses, but many indicators point to working remotely as one of the ways businesses and organizations can position themselves to stay productive and relevant, even during times of pandemic.
Business productivity studies show that over ninety percent of surveyed employers have reported that employee productivity has been the same since pre-pandemic times while many businesses report higher employee productivity rates during the COVID-19 pandemic after shifting to remote operations.
There are a number of tools that businesses can utilize to ensure that operations commence successfully, even during considerable disruptions. One solution used to gauge employee productivity is an employee productivity tracker, which helps eliminate any guess work involved in assessing and compensating for an employee’s work on a daily basis.
Employees who know that their productivity is being observed and recorded often end up producing work at a higher quality and in more volume than when employees are left to do their work without observation.
Other remote work tools for businesses and employees include team management software, team collaboration and communication solutions, cloud storage services, online documentation and signature technologies, as well as online employee onboarding tools.
Even when employees were more often doing their work in offices of brick and mortar businesses, many employees admit to spending up to two hours each day on non-work-related tasks.
Employee productivity trackers not only decrease the possibility of COVID-19 spread, but business solutions such as these make at-home workers more productive on a daily basis. Business forecasters expect organizations to continue to ramp up their remote operations through 2021 and into the forthcoming years.
Remote work solutions for businesses continue to evolve and are more and more easily implemented not only into businesses but into at home employee technologies.