The COVID-19 pandemic greatly changed the way many Americans work. The exponential increase in remote work opportunities and the number of people that work from home was unlike anything most of us have seen in our lifetimes. And now, as the access to safe and effective vaccines increases and the U.S. begins to return to “normal,” it’s understandable that our work situations would once again start to evolve.

There’s no doubt about it: COVID 19 has changed the way we live in so many ways. Not the least of those is how we work. Since the beginning of the pandemic, countless employers from all around the US and the world have allowed their employees to work from home.

Even in the best of circumstances – like working with an already-established team in a traditional office environment, for example – leading a team comes with some challenges. But when your team members are scattered across a variety of different locations, successfully leading that group of people can be especially challenging. Fortunately, there are some strategies you can use to overcome those issues and ensure the success of your team.

Anyone who has managed or led the activities of a team in a workplace knows all too well how challenging it can be to improve the work performance of that team. Thankfully, there are some standard methods to use if you’re in a typical office environment – methods such as regular team meetings, in-person team-building exercises, recognition of individual efforts in meeting settings, and establishing a positive work environment, for example.

Beginning in early 2020, when COVID-19 shutdowns began in earnest throughout the US, many companies started to allow their employees to work remotely. This was not necessarily a gesture of goodwill to loyal workers – instead, it was an absolute necessity in order to maintain businesses through what is arguably one of the most challenging times that this country has ever faced.

Over the past 12 months, thanks in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work has become increasingly common for employees throughout the US and the entire globe. Although most of us automatically assume that anyone “working remotely” must be working from home, that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. The fact is that people work remotely from a variety of different locations.

Since early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold and began to have a devastating impact on the economies of the US and other countries throughout the world, work-from-home jobs became the norm. Telecommuting – once considered as a perk that some employers offered to their most valued workers – became a life line to companies attempting to keep their business afloat in the midst of quarantine and widespread stay-at-home directives.

Even if you weren’t directly involved in the remote work trend that exploded in the first year of the COVID 19 pandemic, chances are you heard plenty about it. And if you held an office job prior to 2020, and did not end up working at home for at least part of the year due to the coronavirus, you might just be in the minority.

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the trend of telecommuting has experienced massive growth over the past year. For company owners and managers, establishing and supervising a remote workforce has presented a few challenges. One of those is determining what you can provide to your remote staff that would help them in their daily work-from-home routine.

The beginning of each year is a good time to reflect on the previous one. But if you’re like most people, 2020 isn’t a year that you want to spend a lot of time thinking about. The global pandemic wreaked havoc on the entire world over the past year, and although vaccines are on the way, as of the beginning of 2021 we are still battling COVID 19 and the impacts it has had on our communities.