Companies continue to struggle with the growing pains of remote work, with a new study showing that collaboration, among other aspects of work, presents a wide range of challenges of employees working from home.
It’s no secret that the pandemic-drive remote work shift has thrown a wrench in the plan for a lot of businesses. In most cases, the average company wasn’t exactly prepared for a sudden shift to its workforce leaving the office, and it hasn’t been easy to catch up.
However, almost two years have passed since the beginning of the pandemic, and businesses need to get with the picture. Unfortunately, this study shows that many continue to lag behind.
26% Believe Cross-Team Collaboration Is the Biggest Challenge
The new study from Hubspot surveyed 600 project management professionals from 34 different countries and found a wide range of statistics about project management in the remote work world. For one, 26% of leaders believe that cross-team collaboration is the biggest challenge in today’s workforce.
“All of these rapid changes have exposed many of the limitations of traditional project management processes and tools to accommodate the needed flexibility and inherent diversity of hybrid teams,” reads the study.
The respondents to the survey aren’t wrong. Remote and hybrid working arrangements have shown a bright spotlight on the glaring problems with project management in the modern age, and those aren’t the only issues with the strategy.
Other Project Management Statistics
The Hubspot went further in depth about project management during the pandemic, discovering a number of significant statistics that denote a significant impact on the business world. Here are a few of them:
- 40% of respondents said that 76-100% of projects demand collaboration outside of their immediate team
- Only 14% of businesses are working together, in person, in a single building
- 46% of organizations do not have a dedicated project management department
- 49% of teams merely use in-person and virtual meetings to facilitate collaboration, with only 11% using project management software
The inability to collaborate — as well as these other project management concerns — makes sense in a pandemic that has seen businesses shaken up by remote work policies. However, the reality is that there are plenty of tools out there that can help ease the problem, you just need to know where to find them.
How to Improve Project Management
If you’re one of the companies that is struggling to adapt to the remote/hybrid work boom, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways for you to thrust your business into the 21st century with tools and tips on project management that improve productivity every time.
Arguably the best advice we can give you is to take advantage of the many digital resources available in 2021. It could be a simple messaging platform like Slack to keep in touch with your team or a full-on project management software like ClickUp that can track progress and provide analytics for your entire business. Some will cost you money, but many are free, so you can get started without a big hit to your budget.
Check out our ClickUp review for more information
Simply put, you can’t keep doing the same things you were up to before the pandemic to manage your team in 2021. The rules have changed, employees are different, and you need tools and strategies to address these changes. Otherwise, you’re going to see some serious dips in employee retention by the end of the year.
