How Social Media Growth has Fostered a Remote Work Culture

Remote work has become more prevalent in recent years. In the last two years, there is an increasing number (78% increase) of job adverts on LinkedIn with remote working options.

With the enforced lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak taking its place, the culture of remote work has become more established as businesses look for ways to continue to work.

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Remote work does have many benefits both for the company and the workers. It is cheaper and helps to save money. And many believe that remote workers are more productive.

However, the productivity of remote workers and the increasing interest in remote work is firmly due to social media.

Why social media is an important tool?

The importance of social media for remote workers is how it helps them to stay connected with their organization as well as colleagues at work. It keeps them connected to the essentials that they need to work successfully from their remote locations. So, these tools offer the benefits that workers would have from working at the same location.

For instance, social media tools allow managers to easily remain connected and have a high level of accessibility to their team members.

Another advantage of social media as stated by an aussie essay writer in custom essay papers is that it allows remotely distributed teams to come together virtually to solve a problem, provide internal feedbacks, and share ideas within themselves. And all of these can be done without needing to schedule a meeting or management prompting meetings.

Social media allows the team to bond and connect without seeing each other and also promote collaborative work within the team. It ensures that teammates work together even if they are not working from the same location.

This leads to improved team morale as working relationships among co-workers continue to improve, and allows the organization to hire people that will help them grow further rather than trying to replace workers that have burnout.

Social media strategy to adopt for remote workers

So much has been said about remote workers collaborating on social media but there is little information on how that is supposed to work. You are not just telling opening a Slack account and leaving your employees to it. For you to use social media well and make sure that your remote workers are productive, you have to be strategic about it.

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The first thing to do is to encourage your employees to engage with the tool. Let them see it as a tool for collaboration and teamwork for improved productivity and not just an avenue to ask questions and leave. They have to be present on the platform and work collaboratively. They should also show their personality on social media, deal with problems, ask questions, and also celebrate success together.

Secondly, accountability is very crucial. According to a custom essay in the online assignment help platform, this is a culture that you have to build within your employees and remote workers and also sustain over time. Your social media platform is a blessing but it can become a curse overnight if you do not set things straight from the onset. Lay down some rules of engagement and ensure to enforce these rules whenever necessary.

Thirdly, you should try to show your employees how this works. This is even more important if your company is at the start of allowing people to work remotely or the worker wants to start to work from home by themselves. You do not just leave them alone to go and try things out on their own. Even if you have very brilliant remote workers, if they are unable to understand how they can use social media well for their job, they will falter and will be less productive. So, you should provide help for as many of your remote workers that need help. You can provide incentives to learn the use of some necessary tools. This will help them to be more productive.

How social media promotes remote working

Social media has a lot of advantages for remote working and it can't be said that it does not have its disadvantages. However, it is fast becoming common knowledge that the few demerits of social media for remote workers are bearable and cannot topple the numerous advantages. Companies continue to adopt more policies to promote remote working because of the presence and growth of social media.

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But how does social media help precisely?
Here are a few ways it helps.

1. It creates a work-life balance

   

   Many people find it hard to find or create that balance between their work and family. These people are forced to lean towards their work as they have to wake up and leave home early to catch a bus to work, spend hours working, and come back home late and tired.

   So, even if they wanted to spend more time with their family, they are unable to do this because they do not have any more time to spare. But this is not the same with remote workers thanks to social media.

   Social media allows people to work from home and stay connected with their bosses, colleagues, and everything going on at work while also maintaining a similar or greater level of productivity.

   Because they work from home, they stay connected to their families and social media connects them to their work. So, remote workers stay connected to two of the most important parts of their lives and create a balance with both.

2. It provides access to professional networking

   

   One of the biggest disadvantages of remote working is isolation and it is also one of the reasons why many consider it difficult to work from home. The problem here is that many workers are used to having their coworkers and colleagues around them while they work.

   So, having to work alone without people that share similar knowledge, passion, and interest is considered difficult. To be honest, it is difficult.

   Social media bridges this gap as it connects remote workers to their coworkers and colleagues from any part of the world. So, they can somewhat "replicate" the experience that they are used to. Doing this can help them create the work atmosphere that they are used to and helping them to remain productive.

   Social media also allows remote workers to be a part of a global discussion about their industry. So, they are not ignorant of the latest trend and developments in their industry. By joining in on these online discussions, they get to meet new people. This allows them to connect professionally with people from different parts of the world in the same industry as them.

3. It helps to streamline the work process

   

   Without social media, remote work will be many years behind where it currently is in many industries. Collaboration with other remote workers and colleagues at work would have been nothing short of an impossible dream. But the presence and growth of social media have made remote work possible and easy as well, and it also helps with a streamlined work process.

   Social media can be used for professional growth and personal networking. But its informal nature and flexibility aids communication and allows people to express themselves in very clear language. This is why it is easy for team members working remotely to communicate with each other and create an atmosphere that makes it seem like they are physically around each other. This work interaction will only improve with the evolution of social media and the emergence of newer platforms.

   Slack, for example, is a social media platform that does not work like other traditional platforms. It is a more professional platform and is not as common as the other platforms. But it allows easy communication and connection and can be used to maintain office collaboration among a company's workers.

Conclusion

In more recent years, social media has continued to increase and exert its influence on business organizations. Apart from providing a market place for businesses to market their products and services, it also allows business organizations to cut some running costs by allowing people to work remotely.

Remote workers are also able to accomplish many things with the aid of social media and this makes them happier and more productive employees.

Social media has indeed aided the growth of the remote work culture. As it keeps the workers connected to their families, colleagues, friends, and employees, they derive more satisfaction from working and can work more productively from home.