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As companies begin to return to an office setting, many founders of remote-based businesses are wondering if they need to follow suit. Remote setups were vital to keeping businesses going during the worst days of the pandemic, but is it incumbent on leaders to get their employees back in person to get to a next stage of growth? Not necessarily so, says Terry Rice, a business development consultant and contributor at Entrepreneur. "Being remote brings all kinds of benefits, from recruiting talent to low overhead," he says. "The key is being open and honest with employees about good and bad news, and keeping people connected on a human level — just because there is no water cooler doesn't mean people shouldn't be talking about fun things like TV shows they're watching." In this video, Terry meets with Alyssa Monroe, who runs a digital-first marketing and communications firm for beauty and lifestyle brands and cre...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. It was easy to go home because we had to. Now, how do we get people to want to come back? In 2019, less than 6% of American workers worked primarily from home. Then COVID hit, and by May 2020, 35% of workers worked completely remotely, as high as 57% among professional and management occupations. Now, business leaders want people back in the office . Without in-person workplace interactions, leaders see workers missing out on building vital connections that facilitate collaboration and innovation and the soft skills gained by interacting with people at various levels within the company. But according to Pew research , 61% of remote workers say they work from home because they prefer to. Among knowledge workers unsatisfied with their current workplace flexibility, 71% said they were open to finding another job in the oncoming year. Demanding workers come back will drive quit rates and turn off new t...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. A November 2022 survey by Gallup finds that 46% of hybrid employees report being engaged at work when their team determines their hybrid work policy of when to come to the office. By contrast, if employees are free to determine their own approach, only 41% report being engaged. If the leadership determines the top-down policy for everyone, only 35% are engaged, and if it's their direct supervisor, 32% are engaged. It makes sense when you think about it. Team members know best what they need in order to collaborate and socialize together effectively. After all, the only useful function of the office is to facilitate collaboration, socialization and mentoring: people are much more productive in their individual tasks at home. So it makes all the sense in the world for the rank-and-file teams to determine what works best for their needs. Yet the Gallup survey shows only 13% of employees say that t...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. With 74% of U.S. companies transitioning to a permanent hybrid model, leaders are turning their attention to measuring the success of their hybrid work model. That's because there's a single traditional office-centric model of Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 in the office, but there are many ways to do hybrid work . Moreover, what works well for one company's culture and working style may not work well elsewhere, even within the same industry. So how should a leader evaluate whether the model they adopted is optimal for their company's needs — or whether those needs require refinement? The first step involves establishing clear success metrics. Unfortunately, relatively few companies measure important aspects of the hybrid work transition. For example, a new report from Omdia suggests that 54% of organizations find that productivity improved from adopting a more hybrid working style, but o...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. By now, just about everyone has heard of the term "quiet quitting." It emerged in March 2022 and refers to doing the bare minimal tasks of your job description well enough that you don't get fired. The concept quickly went viral on TikTok. Yet it only started to gain traction as an issue of concern among business leaders when government data on productivity released in August 2022 showed a sharp and unexpected drop in Q1 and Q2 of 2022. Soon after that worrisome data point in August, Gallup released a survey in early September indicating that as many as half of all Americans may be quiet quitters, further exacerbating business leadership concerns about this problem. Many traditionalist leaders rushed to attribute this drop in productivity and rise in quiet quitting to remote work. For example, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink attributed the drop in productivity to remote work. He called f...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. One of the best aspects of remote work is that you can set up an office anywhere there's Wi-Fi. From your favorite coffee shop to a cozy library to the local bar, you really can work from anywhere. But whether or not you can be productive from anywhere is a different story. StackCommerce You need the right tools to support your remote work lifestyle and if you're spending a lot of time multitasking between tabs, you probably want a second monitor. Fortunately, you don't have to remain bound to your home office when you have the Desklab Portable Touchscreen Monitor . [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZM6mtXRgUA[/embed] An extra monitor can be a great asset whether you're a designer, data analyst, student, or anyone else who works with many windows open. Desklab is more than just another monitor, however. T...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. As part of ongoing cost-cutting measures under new owner and CEO Elon Musk, Twitter is shutting down its Seattle offices and instructing employees to work remotely. That's despite Musk earlier claiming that remote workers are only "pretending to work" and banning remote work at Twitter upon taking it over in early November. So what explains his change of heart? Apparently, it's the costs associated with the company's Seattle office, including rent but also services such as cleaning and security. The fact that Musk — an extreme skeptic of remote work — acknowledged its cost-cutting benefits illustrates the future of remote work for the U.S. economy. It highlights the misleading nature of many headlines that claim an impending recession would lead to the end of remote work since a cooling labor market will give executives more control to require employees to return to the ...

Insider recently spoke to a 32-year-old nonprofit worker who went to Vegas while working remotely. They didn't tell their boss, and everything was going smoothly until an unexpected Zoom meeting. "Many workers can work anywhere," they said. "If you allow work-from-home, it should be flexible." This article originally appeared on Business Insider . Matthias Tunger via Getty Images via Business Insider Remote worker in a casino This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 32-year-old nonprofit worker. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their career, but Insider has verified their identity and employment. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. When I started working entirely from home, I didn't think I would find myself taking a Zoom call from a Vegas casino while trying to make my boss think I w...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Few companies pay enough attention to employee onboarding — according to a recent Gallup survey, only 12% of employees think their company does it well. And it's clear that effective onboarding is crucial for both company productivity and employee retention: Successful onboarding can improve employee performance by up to 15% and means an employee is nine times more likely to stay with the company. Our organization supports companies all over the world with remote onboarding. Here, I want to highlight some onboarding practices that we have found useful both within our own team and when supporting other teams. Related: 4 Building Blocks for a Successful Remote Employee Onboarding Process What does remote onboarding cover? Standard employee onboarding covers all the steps that must be taken to set up a new employee to be successful within the company. This includes introducing new hires to the tea...

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. A new study from the University of Birmingham has found that managers developed a more positive outlook on the benefits of remote and flexible working since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The research surveyed 597 managers and found that 51.8% of them agreed that working from home improves employee concentration, 59.5% agreed that it increases productivity, and 62.8% agreed that it increases motivation. Furthermore, an even larger proportion of managers, 76.5% believe that flexible working generally increases productivity. Importantly, the study also found that line managers were more likely to see flexible working as a performance-enhancing tool (71.2%) than senior management (65.6%). This highlights the importance of educating senior management on the benefits of flexible working and the positive impact it can have on employee performance. Now, managers need to learn how to maximize hybrid...