Remote work has taken the world by storm since the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020. Workers who had never before experienced fully remote jobs were expected to conform to this “new normal.” And while it might have been hard at first for some employees, the vast majority did adjust and actually came to embrace working from home full-time. Even now, when vaccines are widely available and many companies have asked their workers to return to the office at least on a part-time basis, a lot of those employees are hesitant. In fact, a surprising number of workers would prefer to change jobs in an effort to continue their fully remote jobs.

If you’re an employer who is considering asking a reluctant staff to return to the office, you might want to think twice. There are good reasons why people want to continue to work from home. And if they’re already set up to do so, why not give them that option?  After all, several industries continue to allow their employees to work remotely on a full-time basis. Employers within the following business sectors have enjoyed a great deal of success with a fully remote workforce.

• Information Technology: It’s probably no surprise that the IT industry is one of the largest employers of remote workers. This has been especially true during the pandemic, when a growing number of companies relied on IT professionals to provide support to their remote workforce. But even now, when some businesses in other industries are asking that employees return to a more traditional office environment, the need for IT professionals continues to increase. In fact, according to FlexJobs, the IT industry is predicted to be among the fastest-growing business sectors in the coming years.
• Customer Service: Some career choices just lend themselves to working remotely. Customer service is one of those. Most of these jobs can be easily done virtually anywhere. From an employer perspective, it’s relatively simple to set up your customer service representatives to work from home and accomplish all their daily tasks – including resolving customer complaints, processing product orders, answering questions about products and services, etc. – all of which can easily be done online and over the phone.
• Marketing: Although the marketing industry may not be the first that comes to mind when you think of fully remote jobs, it really does make sense. As fast as ecommerce has grown over the past year (and for several years prior to that), the associated marketing efforts have also become primarily digital in nature. Today’s digital marketing professionals offer services such as SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing, blog writing, etc.

If you have talented employees and you want to keep them, allowing them to work from home is a great step in the right direction. And if you’re still hesitant to let your employees continue with their fully remote jobs, we have more good news that should provide you with some comfort: there are many tools available that will allow you to measure your remote workers’ productivity levels on a daily basis. One of those is MySammy. Our cloud-based software keeps track of employee productivity and does so without “spying” or blocking websites. In fact, MySammy is designed to be used with the full knowledge of your remote staff. Sign up for your free trial today!