Essay: Analysis Of Remote Intelligence's Popularity For Businesses.

Factors driving the adoption of remote intelligence

Discuss about Rising Area of Remote Intelligence.

This report provides an analysis of increasing field and popularity of remote intelligence. The purpose of the report is to examine and analyse the reasons and the facts behind the increased use of remote intelligence. Remote intelligence is particularly referred to the practice of hiring skilled and talented candidates who work for the company remotely. It has been identified that almost 47% of overall workforce of large MNCs in the Western nations are remote workers. This figure clarifies that there is a growing acceptance of remote workers. This report discusses the sudden rise of telecommuting in different network areas and factors behind the businesses using remote intelligence. Besides the presentation of benefits of remote intelligence in business, the report also highlights the potential threats associated with remote intelligence workforce practice.

It has been identified that telecommuting has increasingly become a way managing business today, as per the data provided by Bureau of Statistics in Australia, almost 20 to 30  workers work at home and measured frequency indicates that individuals at least work once a day a week. Blount and Gloet (2017) mentioned that the major factor behind such increase is, for business it decrease employment and real estate cost which remain as the major backbone of small businesses, which suffers capital and infrastructure expenditure to build a traditional office environment. On the other side, for employees, it saves the travel cost and generate a better work/life balance. Furthermore, an article conducted by Van Gramberg, Teicher and O'Rourke (2014), reveals the fact that Australian business commencing 2014 workforce planning to take teleworkers into account as the viable as well as useful workforce planning approach to enhance productivity and minimize cost. The author of this article has also stated that while business do not find confidence on teleworkers, a report 2013 Tasman Telework Survey by Cisco System mentions that teleworkers are more productive than the conventional on site employees.  Another significant fact found is that the employees who know the use of technology to work from anywhere could become more significant for the organizations and the governmental bodies. For example, the Commonwealth Bank in Australia reported 27% of performance increase due to the employment of teleworkers (communications.gov.au 2013).

Remote intelligence can be defined as the action or practice of hiring people who work for the company sitting at home. It has been identified that due to the advancement of technology and internet, remote work has now been a significant employment practice and now the authors predict that this practice is going to be mainstream in business. In this context, () commented that the term remote intelligence often appears as the core trend in business today because it provides a set of certain advantages such reduced employment cost, real estate cost and others. On the other side, workers who are involved in such practice also contribute to the development of this practice because, employees also receive extending amount of benefits such as work-life balance and increased satisfaction level and any more.

Benefits of remote intelligence for businesses

Working virtually from any part of the world has become increasing trend in 2018 and Gibson (2015) provided the fact that working outside office premises increased from 4% to 37%. Currie, Chiarella and Buckley (2016) mentioned that VPN another technology contributed to create an easy access to work, which indicate that the organisations can globally add to the workforce efforts with remote ease. The following are some of the reasons of having remote intelligence for the business. The companies rely more on remote workforce because remote workers do live outside the geographic area of the office or business but in telecommuting, some workers may work as the onsite worker in the office which again the question of cost. On the other side, in the case of remote work practice, the organization do not have bear the cost of such work practice

Flexibility of work time shift: It is true that people working under remote work intelligence employment have the opportunity to work on any shift time as their choice and preference.  Hence, flexibility is the major reason they are attracted to a workplace. For example, people can take an afternoon off as well as catch up on Sunday and there are other benefits that employees can avail (Deryugin et al. 2015). This means that there is should be a proper agreement between the employers and employees about work time shit. For example, a manager of the company is no supposed to all employee any time they wish.

Skill gap: As most of the large business in the western nations tend to hire remote workforce, the trend has turned into a practice now but the problem is, fresh talents also adopt the trend (Wan, Downey and Stough 2014). The new candidates are not able to learn new corporate and leadership skills. It is true that in remote workforce practice, employees’ knowledge may increase but their communication, decision-making and problem-solving skills are not improving.

Difficulties in achieving overall organizational goals: As the employees tend to work remotely, or sitting at a remote location, there is a clear communication gap between the organizational authorities and the workers (Ríos-Aguilar and Lloréns-Montes 2015). Consequently, the remote workers do not have much idea about how the businesses are operating and how the entire functions are managed. So, it is a threat for the sustainability of the workforce because employees do not have much ideas of corporate business sector is managed.

Threats associated with remote intelligence workforce practice

Providing employees with timely work project and taking feedback from them or sharing a successful organizational story is not the only procedure that a business should follow. Erhart et al. (2016) mentioned that leader is not supposed to call an employee at 1’o clock at night who is in different time zone. This means an employer must have to follow the ethics or the principle of calling an employee in their working time. On the other side, for female employees, it is certain that they may suffer sickness and other physical health problem but if the leader forces the employee to provide delivery of work on company’s preferred time, it is unacceptable.

Decreased cost and enhanced productivity

The most significant and certain advantage to firms bottom line is the savings of office related expense and another significant point is that workers are no longer on long commutes; this means if the organization hire the right people, it may receive a better result.

Learner and smarter development team: It is certain that managing a team of remote workers can be challenging but it is dine appropriately, the business is able to operate a more cost efficient product development team.

High number of part-time employees: It is true that business will always need full-time on site staff but the remote workforce practice enable the business to use part-time works and save thousands of money. Erhart et al. (2016) mentioned that people are more likely to accept the term part-time if they receive part-time work.

Disadvantage of remote intelligence

Lack of community and difference in culture:  As people work from a remote location or home the business does not have scope for face to face interactions. Bailey (2014) mentioned that video conferencing may fulfil the criteria of face to face interaction to some extent but it is not the exact solution. On the other side, there is a cultural gap between the employees and the management of the organization.

The following are some of the characteristics that a leader needs, to manage the remote workers successfully

Indefatigable: It is true that holding a coaching session at 3:00 in the morning could give the leader a mental rush as well as the blast of energy, which indicates that they are on the right track. Managing a remote team means managing across different time zone and regions, which may require long working days.

Characteristics of a successful leader managing remote workers

Company Evangelist: As put forward by Mark, (2016) remote employees could should hear positive stories regarding brand organizational culture but an effective leader must have the skills of acquiring extra pro-culture, extra-positive and extra-pro ban. The leader needs share company culture and story to the employees to create a strong bong with the employees working in the remote locations.

Conclusion

Remote intelligence has become a popular trend in the recent time and with increasing popularity, the many small and medium size business are adopting this trend. The small business finds it easy to run their operating under a limited cost because they do not have to bear the cost of employment and infrastructure but this trend is also affecting the workforce sustainability because the people who work remotely are not able to learn the corporate skills. So, growth of those employees are also limited

References

Bailey, D., 2014. The difficulty of securing your mobile workforce. Computer Fraud & Security, 2014(9), pp.19-20.

Blount, Y. and Gloet, M. eds., 2017. Anywhere Working and the New Era of Telecommuting. IGI Global.

Communications.gov.au (2013). Teleworkers are vital to Australia's workforce challenges. Teleworkers. ( 14 November ). pp 4.

Currie, J., Chiarella, M. and Buckley, T., 2016. Workforce characteristics of privately practicing nurse practitioners in Australia: Results from a national survey. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 28(10), pp.546-553.

Deryugin, V.N., Giacomini, P., Makagon, P., Ryabchun, A. and Anisimov, N., Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc, 2015. Method and apparatus for extended management of state and interaction of a remote knowledge worker from a contact center. U.S. Patent 9,002,920.

Erhart, G., Matula, V.C. and Skiba, D., Avaya Inc, 2016. Optimization in workforce management using work assignment engine data. U.S. Patent 9,531,880.

Gibson, R., 2015. Four strategies for remote workforce training, development, and certification. In Gamification: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 770-785). IGI Global.

Gibson, R., 2015. Four strategies for remote workforce training, development, and certification. In Gamification: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 770-785). IGI Global.

Mark, M. 2016. 6 Traits Of Leaders Who Successfully Manage Remote Employees. Leadership. ( 10 June ). pp 3.

Ríos-Aguilar, S. and Lloréns-Montes, F.J., 2015. A mobile business information system for the control of local and remote workforce through reactive and behavior-based monitoring. Expert Systems with Applications, 42(7), pp.3462-3469.

Van Gramberg, B., Teicher, J. and O'Rourke, A., 2014. Managing electronic communications: a new challenge for human resource managers. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(16), pp.2234-2252.

Wan, H.C., Downey, L.A. and Stough, C., 2014. Understanding non-work presenteeism: Relationships between emotional intelligence, boredom, procrastination and job stress. Personality and Individual Differences, 65, pp.86-90