Remote work is everywhere these days. While it has existed before COVID, the pandemic gave it a big push forward.

Nobody can say for sure how much it will remain after a couple more lockdowns. But some big players like Facebook have decided that they will keep it for good. And some others might be forced to do the same or at least allow partial remote / home office work after one or two more lockdowns.

Do you want to work remotely for Swiss companies as well?

Maybe you are still struggling to convince your clients or employer to work for them from home or from “the road”.

There are a lot of fears and doubts still out there, especially among more conservative employers.

Lack of control?

The biggest fear that some companies have is the lack of control. Until last year, your manager was used to keeping track of you by how many hours you spent in the office. But that is not the whole problem.

In many industries, data privacy is the bigger concern. What if you can’t keep data safe in your home office or when working from a hotel or co-working space. And this is a valid concern. After all, data needs to be kept secure, otherwise there can be a big damage to the reputation of your employer or even fines to the management and you yourself.

Always on and keeping a balance

Another topic that often comes up is that remote workers might find it even more difficult to stop working, being not reachable for a couple of hours or the weekend. This might surprise a very disciplined person at first. After all, you could simply define working hours like before and not respond to work related messages or calls outside of those.

But for many remote workers, this might be an issue. Not everyone is so disciplined or might fear judgment of not performing well enough, since just being in the office and “putting in those hours” is not so visible any more.

Challenging but doable

Whatever you may think about how good of an idea home office and remote work is, I think for many there won’t be so much of a choice in the future. The world has changed and I think it will be for good.

So the remaining question is: How do you deal with the challenges and potential problems of working remotely both as an employer but also as a remote worker?

Get help

All of these challenges can be addressed, fixed and doubts can be overcome.

I have a lot of experience working remotely in various digital roles, even way before COVID and will gladly help you have a great remote work life or to convince your employer to allow you to have one.