16 Challenges Businesses Face When Operating Remotely (And How To Address Them)

The sudden, massive shift to remote work in 2020 uncovered a wealth of opportunities for businesses that wanted to offer greater workplace flexibility and open up their geographic talent pool. However, it also presented some obstacles, including technology troubles, the “digital divide” of internet access, and security concerns about using insecure home networks.

As more and more businesses transition to a permanent remote work model, they’ve had to find corresponding permanent solutions to the challenges they’ve faced with their distributed workforce. Below, 16 members of Forbes Business Council discussed some of the hurdles they’re currently facing as remote companies and how they’re addressing them.

1. Investing In The Right Tech

A big challenge was the ability to effectively demonstrate our technology remotely. We’ve utilized the Discord gaming platform to conduct immersive, real-time demos, showcasing the high-performance capabilities of our LiDAR, to hundreds of engineers all over the world. – Blair LaCorte, AEye

2. Offering Enriching In-Person Interactions 

At our company, meetings have been conducted over video conferencing, but when we did finally meet, the foundations laid virtually over the past year fostered creativity and inspired brainstorming sessions. Remote does work, but we need to remind ourselves every so often that it’s the stuff that makes us human that needs to enrich interactions, like face-to-face meetings, to spark new ideas and collaboration. – Christelle Rohaut, Codi

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3. Fostering IT Security

We implemented a clear two-step system to foster IT security via a systematic security check. It is advisable to take preventative action, checking systems, data and processes for security deficiencies at regular intervals. We also implemented a clear concept by establishing a complete IT security concept, regularly reviewing our concept and adapting it to changing circumstances. – Sebastian Holtkemper, Itesys AG

4. Leveraging Online Platforms

Our company has operated remotely for the last seven years. Of course, there is no experience like working with people in person, but leveraging the amazing online platforms available allows for great team collaboration and communicating with clients. I find remote working far more efficient, especially when not having to spend two hours commuting. – Hanna Fitz, Cultured Life Global

5. Providing Active Dialogue And Consistent Feedback

One major obstacle we’ve run into as a small but fast-growing company has been training and integrating recent junior hires. It’s also important to foster a positive, hard-working and transparent culture. We are addressing this by directing senior employees to provide active dialogue, consistent feedback and mostly encouraging people to take chances and understand it’s okay to make mistakes. – Andrew Simon, Macro Hive

6. Hosting Daily Video Calls

As an early-stage company, we have made the commitment to work out of a physical office, which has been very rewarding from a moral and productivity standpoint. We do have several remote teammates, however, everyone who joins our company spends three to four weeks onsite with the team. Our major challenge is to keep our remote team feeling engaged, and we do that with daily video calls. – Gordon Smith, Biproxi

7. Hiring Remote Workers From Around The World

The world has been flat since Covid. Remote work means you can hire anyone anywhere. That’s good news for the tech sector and any sector looking for tech talent. In Canada, it’s a new threat to the local talent supply as U.S. companies hire Canadians at a discount based on currency advantages. – Sean Languedoc, Global Talent Accelerator

8. Having Regular Meetings, Hang-Outs And Check-Ins

We are addressing the challenge of remote work through semi-annual team visits in-person, quarterly targets that are assigned to each team and, with group planning, mini-town halls weekly to sync on projects or initiatives. We also have social digital hangouts that are scheduled monthly. – Everett Lynn, Amenify

9. Creating A Collaborative Online Community Culture

Our athlete community is the heart of our brand, and we are committed to telling their stories and empowering them. We now use remote work to create a collaborative online community culture where we foster a growth mindset. We match our young talent with professional athletes to mentor them, and we encourage everyone to share their at-home workout routines to inspire our community and others. – Jazz Gill, SPARBAR INC

10. Supporting Different Team Dynamics

Collaboration is the biggest challenge that we face running a completely remote business. We are addressing the issue with the following: Providing multiple platforms to support different team requirements, tailoring processes and programs to specific situations and individuals, training managers to effectively manage remote group dynamics and continually reviewing and fine-tuning programs. – Scott Fletcher, LocatorX

11. Implementing A Central Communication Channel

A challenge our business has experienced since working remotely has been cross-team communication. The bridge between sales and ops should be airtight, especially in the enterprise B2B space. This sets the table for a positive client experience and increases customer retention. We implemented a central communication channel (Slack) and hold focused, top-priority meetings to help bridge this gap. – Jen Root, Manifest Commerce

12. Continuously Checking In

A challenge for us was communication inefficiencies with team members who work remotely. Our team members have continuous and streamlined communication when working just a few feet away in the same office, but seem hesitant to call or email with minor questions, to provide progress or status updates and to share their challenges when working remotely. As such, I started to proactively reach out to check in and offer help. – Catherine Kuo, Elite Commercial Real Estate

13. Organizing Monthly Meetups

Building and maintaining trust is the biggest challenge when operating remotely. To tackle this at Originscale, we are organizing team meetups once every month and getaways twice every year to build a social bond that enhances trust. – Bhaskar Ahuja , Originscale Corp

14. Pivoting To Digital Spaces

Remote work has certainly brought both opportunities and challenges. At the beginning of the pandemic, restaurants, hotels, galleries and stores were closed. Events, exhibitions and art design fairs were canceled. Therefore, companies (including mine) pivoted to digital marketing, social media, e-commerce and Zoom. However, I am more than happy to see that most of the world has reopened! – Veronica H. Speck, VHS Ventures

15. Establishing A Hybrid Working Model

I think as a company, we need to keep providing consistent opportunities for interaction, collaboration and networking in person. We work off a hybrid model, so our offices are open and working towards building out more collaborative workspaces for meetings, strategy sessions and planning. Work from home is effective, but nothing replaces in-person collaboration. A permanent hybrid model provides a balance. – Rob Sanchez, MeritB2B

16. Scheduling Collaborative Work Hours

My company was dealing with remote work even before Covid-19, since many of our employees and artists were remote workers to start. One issue we had was scheduling. It was difficult to schedule everyone to meet and work together when everyone was geographically distributed. To fix this, we set up some days to be scheduled so that employees worked in the morning and at night, but not during the day. – Ada Liu, ShareCreators

Original Article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/12/22/16-challenges-businesses-face-when-operating-remotely-and-how-to-address-them/?sh=7e4aa5d055bc