What Is Remote Working?

Date First Published: 22nd October 2023

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Ethics & Sustainability

Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Easy

Difficulty Level: 3/10

CONTENTS

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Remote Working
Difference Between Remote Working, Working From Home, and Teleworking
History

Learn about what remote working is in this article.

Remote working, is the use of technology, the internet, and cloud computing to complete work from one's home or another location rather than a physical office or a central location. Over time, the advances in technology have led to an increase in remote working, to the point where large numbers of people work remotely and being in the same location does not matter. Remote workers often manage their workload independently.

Advantages and Disadvantages Of Remote Working

The advantages of remote working are:

Much more flexibility. The greatest advantage of remote working is that it allows people to work when and where they want to. This allows people to fit work around other commitments and their personal life.
Improved work-life balance. There is evidence that remote workers become less overwhelmed by their jobs than people who work in a physical office. This is because remote working allows workers to maintain a better relationship between work, personal life, and self-care, and prevent work from dominating their life. This can improve employee retention and help teams stay connected.
Reduced costs. Remote working eliminates the need to travel long distances to offices, reducing employee's and manager's carbon footprints. It also reduces the costs of businesses hiring office space and buying office equipment for workers.
People can often work at their own pace and manage their workload independently, reducing the workload on managers.
Less training is required. Remote working often allows workers to choose devices they are already familiar with. Since they know how to use their own devices, it is less likely that training will be needed for employees to make use of a new operating system or interface, saving time and costs.

The disadvantages of remote working are:

Workers cannot be directly monitored. Unlike office work, workers cannot be directly monitored when working remotely. This increases the chances of them procrastinating and missing tasks. Workers can also become distracted, which can decrease productivity and motivation.
Workers are constantly contactable. When working remotely, workers often find themselves constantly contactable 24/7. This can lead to work creeping into their personal lives and result in a lack of separation between work and personal life.
Remote working relies on a fast internet connection and availability. If there were any technical issues, like a loss of internet connection or services going down, workers would be unable to work remotely.

Difference Between Remote Working, Working From Home, and Teleworking

Remote working is not the same thing as working from home. Working from home is just one form of remote working. Remote working means that someone works from a place other than the physical office, which could be from home, a shared or public working space, a coffee shop, or any other off-site location. Remote working is not limited to working from home and remote workers can work in locations other than home.

Remote working is slightly different from teleworking. Teleworking often requires some in-person office attendance and teleworkers are often closer to the main office location than remote workers. Remote work allows greater flexibility, does not require any in-person attendance, and remote workers often communicate by instant messaging, email, telephone, and VoIP. Therefore, if someone is working from home 100% of the time, it would be more accurate to say that they are working remotely.

History

Remote working began in the 1970s when technology was developed that linked satellite offices to mainframe computers through computer terminals using telephone lines as a network bridge. In 1979, five IBM employees were allowed to work from home as an experiment. The experiment had increased to 2,000 people by 1983. By the early 1980s, branch offices and home workers could connect to organisational mainframes using personal computers and terminal emulators.

In the 1990s and 2000s, remote working became more common with the introduction of internet technologies, such as collaborative software, cloud computing, VPNs, VoIP, and conference calling. In 1995, the phrase "work is something you do, not something you travel to" was invented. Variations of this phrase include: "Work is what we do, not where we are."

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic greatly increased the number of people working remotely for health and safety reasons. It forced office workers to work from home and millions of workers began remote work for the first time. The sudden change from office work to remote work caused an increase in both physical and mental health issues among workers.