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.

The year 2020 has been challenging, to say the least. For managers and business owners, one of the most significant of these challenges has been transitioning from an onsite workforce to one that works from home. In making this transition, it’s easy to focus on what’s difficult about managing a telecommuting staff.

Thanks in large part to the global pandemic, 2020 brought with it an exponential rise in telecommuting for businesses of all sizes and in virtually every industry. And while we could debate the advantages and disadvantages of this trend, one thing is certain: everyone attempting to manage a remote workforce has faced obstacles in trying to achieve that task.

To say that 2020 has been a year that has brought about the unexpected would be a vast understatement. From a changing political landscape to a global pandemic and the resulting economic impacts, 2020 has been a year that will not soon be forgotten.

Most managers are accustomed to running face-to-face meetings with employees. But if part or all of your staff are now working remotely from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you are probably finding yourself in a much different situation when it comes to conducting a team meeting. While there’s no doubt about the value of video conference tools in helping to manage a remote team, conducting a virtual meeting can be a challenge.