Advantages of remote work
First, it is important not to mix up notions “remote work” and “freelance”. Remote work is not always a freelance: you can be a full-time employee of a company but work at home. A freelancer is a person who is not connected with a company by a labor contract; he just implements projects by service contracts. A freelancer also works remotely.
Who is usually looking for a remote work? Mothers, looking for a chance not to lose qualification while being on a child care leave, students, looking for an opportunity to work without prejudice to study and also pensioners who want to get extra money.
Usually free schedule attracts people. However, remote work doesn’t usually mean the absence of schedule. Very often a remote employee should be in touch while discussing of a project in some certain time. Then, some managers ask for an employee to make their tasks in some certain time in order to monitor his work by a time tracker. Variants of using of a time tracker by a company for a remote employee depend on specifics of work tasks.
A doubtless advantage of a remote work is that an employee can save his time and has the opportunity to devote more time on his family or other things. Also money on transportation to work is saved. Then, you don’t need an office uniform if you work at home. It means that you save money on office clothes.
If we talk about a freelance, here we can mention not only a freedom from office conventions but a freedom of job selection, because a freelancer can choose projects and customers himself according to his desires and interests.
Sometimes it can be important for some people that they can arrange their own home office as they want. Those whose work is creative usually cannot work at the office. That is why it is better for them to work remotely.
However…
A specialist who works remotely meets his manager very seldom. That can lead to the lack of feedbacks from management and can cause professional problems. A remote employer very seldom gets the assessment of his work. It can slow down professional growing of an employee and trouble acquirement of new competences. A time tracker in this situation can be a useful tool. It can help to assess the effectiveness of work by a manager and gives the opportunity to follow a progress by an employee.
Lack of professional communication with colleagues is one more disadvantage of remote work. However, some companies use internal portals to solve this problem.
A remote employee should provide himself with all office supplies and computer equipment using his own funds. A computer should be powerful enough to support internal portals software or time tracker software. It can be quite expensive for an employee to arrange his home office.
Anyway, a remote work requires a high level of self-management and personal responsibility. Some people cannot be so well-organized to work remotely. Fortunately, managers use time trackers in order to monitor work of remote employees which gives motivation to employees and raises their effectiveness.