Key Challenges of Remote Workers and How to Overcome Them

Remote working has become more and more popular these days with the change of workers’ lifestyles towards wishing to find more flexibility and balance between professional and personal life.  Multiple  studies have shown that remote workers are often more productive than those who work in their home office. However, not everyone has a natural self-discipline to work well remotely.

We asked a number of remote workers that came to  Valencia, one of the cities in Spain with the most digital nomads and largest remote worker communities, about the main challenges they are facing as remote workers and how they manage to overcome them. This is what they shared:

1. Isolation and lack of personal contact with co-workers and clients

When you work remotely, it becomes very easy to get into the habit of sitting down at your computer in the morning and working all day by yourself. Attending team meetings taking place in the office, joining with a video call, having video calls with your manager and key colleagues on a regular basis is a common way not to feel left out. You could also consider connecting with the remote workers’ community in your city, spending a part of your working day in cafes where they go, attend remote workers’ events or joining a co-working space  to get the feeling you are «in the office». Working in a co-working space especially helps you connect with other professionals, stay more focused and organized working from a place different than your home.

2. Lack of productivity due to the tendency of delaying to get things done

There are many methods, tools and mobile applications that remote based professionals can use to improve their productivity in an easy and fun way, such as the pomodoro technique. This technique involves dedicating 25 minutes of uninterrupted time to a task. When 25 minutes is up, you take a short break to get coffee or check emails, then go back to another 25 minute period of work. When you’ve completed four of these work periods, you can take a longer break of up to 30 minutes.

3. Security risks and Internet connectivity issues

When you work remotely, you can connect to work from anywhere – home, a coffee shop, or while traveling. Office environments typically have some sort of security in place to prevent many types of security risks, such as cyberattacks, but remote-based professionals often don’t and should find the best way to protect their work and company data and resources. Internet connectivity can vary in quality and speed when working from remote locations and that can jeopardize your relationship with clients in meetings and the overall efficiency of you work. The best way to overcome this challenge is to join a coworking space so you have all this already taken care of for you. If you are on the move, you can invest in a good global mobile internet service. This will let you access the internet and get down to work from wherever you are in the world.

4. Unplugging from work

While some people struggle with eliminating distractions and focusing on completing their work tasks, others have a hard time disconnecting at the end of the work day. A great way to help is to establish clear specific working hours per day with flexibility depending on the timezone where team members and clients are located, to facilitate communication between them, smooth workflow and accomplishing goals and deadlines.

To connect with other co-workers and digital nomads in Valencia, join our co-working space and participate in our activities, just click here!

Categories: Moving abroad

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