Companies value remote work for its flexibility and access to talent around the world, while employees appreciate it for freedom and time savings. But how can you ensure smooth operations, increase productivity, and at the same time keep your team motivated? In this article, we’ll explain how to structure remote work so that it benefits the business.
What Is Remote Work and What Types Exist
Remote work is when employees perform their job duties not in the company’s office, but in any other place. It could be a home, coworking space, or even a café on the other side of the world. Yet behind this simple idea lie several different scenarios, and it’s important to understand which one is right for you and your team.
A few years ago, this level of flexibility seemed unattainable for most professions — especially in traditional industries. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work and flexible schedules were exceptions available mainly to freelancers or IT specialists. Many companies were skeptical about the idea of working outside the office, considering it unproductive. But the 2020 crisis showed that the remote format can be quite effective, and many companies decided not to bring employees back to the office.
Fully Remote Format
The fully remote format means that employees work from anywhere — permanently and without being tied to an office, even if it formally exists. In such companies, teams can be distributed across different cities and countries, and all work — from daily tasks to strategic discussions — takes place entirely online. This model gives employees the freedom to choose the environment in which they are most productive, and gives companies access to talent regardless of geography. At the same time, it requires high levels of self-discipline, responsibility, and trust from everyone involved, as well as a well-thought-out digital infrastructure, transparent processes, and a culture where remote work is seen not as a temporary measure but as a deliberate choice.
Hybrid Format
Perhaps the most popular model today. Employees work from home part of the week and spend the remaining days in the office for meetings, brainstorming sessions, and face-to-face communication. This is the golden middle ground that allows you to take the best of both worlds — the flexibility of remote work and the energy of office life.
Interesting fact: More and more professionals are becoming digital nomads — employees who work remotely and lead a mobile lifestyle without being tied to one place. Such specialists choose any corner of the world with a reliable internet connection: today it might be an apartment in St. Petersburg, and next month — a house on the coast of the Black Sea. For them, geography is not a limitation.
Pros and Cons of Remote Work
, working from home is gradually becoming a stable norm for the Russian labor market, especially for the younger generation aged 18–35, who choose a better work-life balance.
What’s Good for Employees
- Mobility. You can start work earlier to finish sooner, or take a break during the day to visit a doctor. The schedule adapts to life, not the other way around.
- More Free Time. Traffic jams and hours spent on public transport are now a thing of the past. This time can be spent on sleep, hobbies, or family — and it also saves money on commuting.
- Your Own “Office.” You can work from your favorite chair, coworking space, or café. You can set up your workspace the way you like it.
- Travel. Remote work gives you the freedom to choose your geography: you can work from home, another country, or even while traveling. The key is a good internet connection.
What Are the Drawbacks
- Lack of live communication can lead to a sense of isolation from the team.
- Work that never ends. When your laptop is always nearby, there’s a temptation to check your email in the evening or finish a task on the weekend. The line between work and rest blurs, leading to burnout.
- Too many distractions. Dirty dishes, unfinished shows, a tempting sofa — home is full of everyday things that interfere with work.
Now let’s look at the situation from the employer’s perspective.
What Are the Benefits of Remote Work for Companies?
- Talent Market Without Borders. You can hire the best designer from Vladivostok and a top developer from Kaliningrad without being limited to the Moscow market.
- Significant Cost Savings. Renting a large office, maintaining it, paying utilities, buying tea and cookies — all these are significant expenses that can be reduced.
- Attractiveness for Candidates. For many job seekers, the opportunity to work remotely is now a decisive factor when choosing a workplace.
Even amid the overall decline in vacancies in the country, interest in remote work formats continues to grow. between January and September 2025, the number of job postings offering remote work increased by 17% and reached 745,000 — almost every tenth vacancy on the market.
For job seekers, “remote work” has already become a natural part of professional life: almost half of respondents note that the ability to work remotely is one of the key factors when choosing an employer, second only to income level and flexible schedule.
What Should Managers Be Concerned About?
- How to organize remote work so that employees remain engaged and meet deadlines. It’s harder for a manager to control this process remotely.
- Data security under threat. Corporate information is transmitted through employees’ home Wi-Fi networks, which creates new risks of data leaks and cyberattacks.
- Corporate spirit at a distance. How can you unite a team when people have never met in person? Maintaining shared values and a sense of belonging online is a challenging task.
What to Pay Attention To
To make remote work truly effective, it’s important to build a solid foundation of four key elements.
Comfortable Workspace
What the Company Provides: workplace standards for remote work (desk, chair with back support, headset, camera), internet speed requirements, reimbursement/provision of equipment.
What’s Expected from the Employee: maintaining ergonomics, organizing a distraction-free area, adjusting lighting.
Good Time Management
Company/Manager: rules for working hours and breaks, SLA for responses, recommended practices (e.g., “Pomodoro”), transparent processes.
Employee: personal routines for starting/ending the day, task planning, meeting deadlines.
Organizing Communications
Communication is usually divided into two types:
- Synchronous — real-time interaction: video calls and meetings for urgent matters, brainstorming sessions, and situations requiring quick feedback.
- Asynchronous — communication in chats, emails, or task managers. These are suitable for questions that don’t require instant answers and allow colleagues from different time zones to work comfortably.
It’s important for the company to consciously choose communication tools, define internal communication rules, and document them in the knowledge base. For example, use a messenger for urgent team questions and email for client communication.
Employees are expected to follow all agreements and digital hygiene rules.
Preventing Burnout
Burnout during remote work can creep up unnoticed. Constant fatigue, irritability, and loss of interest in work are its clear signs.
Companies should consider policies regarding notifications outside working hours, attitudes toward overtime, and its regulation. They can hold regular 1:1 meetings to assess employee morale or use informal communication formats and workload monitoring.
Employees need to take care of themselves: take breaks, set boundaries between work and personal life, participate in initiatives, and maintain contact with colleagues.
On the eXpress platform, there is a special bot — Random Coffee Bot. It helps employees find new points of connection and get to know colleagues better. The employee fills out a short form — indicating interests, city, and workplace. The bot matches conversation partners based on common interests and sends contacts. The HR department receives statistics in Excel: meeting dynamics and engagement level.
Tools for Remote Work
Corporate Communication Platforms
Coordinated teamwork directly depends on communication tools and rules. Good tools are the foundation of transparent processes. They create a unified digital space for communication, document storage, collaboration, and task control.
Consider three aspects:
- Security — where data is stored and who has access to it (on-premise or cloud);
- Usability — how intuitive the platform is and how much training it requires;
- Compatibility — how easily it integrates with other company systems.
The fewer applications employees need to switch between, the higher the focus. That’s why companies are moving to corporate platforms that combine chats, calls, video conferencing, tasks, and files in a single environment.
For example, Rosatom and Nornickel created their own branded applications based on eXpress, featuring multiple functions: chats, video conferencing, a calendar, and corporate services in one window.
Among comprehensive platforms, explore eXpress, VK Services, MTS Link, Truncoff, Yandex, Kontur.Talk, and Pachka. Before choosing a solution, it’s important to study real cases and assess how well it meets your team’s needs.
For Video Conferencing
- Yandex Telemost — a simple and free service, ideal for teams using Yandex products. Works in a browser, doesn’t require installation, and meetings are created via a link.
- Zoom and Google Meet — classics, but with time limits. Suitable for any teams but not considered secure in Russia, as their servers are located abroad.
- eXpress can be used for both chats and video conferencing. Available in cloud and on-premise versions. Cloud servers are located in Russia. In the free version, users can make group or 1:1 calls.
- Kontur.Talk — a corporate solution noted by users for its high video quality.
For Knowledge Management
It’s equally important to systematically record all significant information that arises during remote teamwork. To save time searching through chats, agree to document key decisions, instructions, and meeting results in a unified knowledge base — for example, in EvaWiki or Teamly. This creates a centralized repository of up-to-date data accessible to any employee at any time. Such an approach speeds up task resolution, simplifies onboarding for new colleagues, and reduces repeated explanations. In remote work, a unified knowledge base is not an option — it’s a necessity.
For Task Management
Teams working remotely need specialized tools for task management — simple, scalable, and integrable with other services. You can consider the following programs:
- YouGile — a Russian service with a visual interface in the Kanban board style. It allows easy task movement between columns and real-time tracking of team progress. Ideal for agile methodologies.
- Shtab — a task manager focused on time tracking. It helps understand how many hours are spent on tasks — useful for hourly billing or efficiency analysis.
- Bitrix24 — a comprehensive corporate platform that combines task management, CRM, document flow, and other business tools.
For Collaboration
Remote work is impossible without effective collaboration: teams need to edit documents, maintain knowledge bases, share materials, and keep a unified information space. This is especially important for analysts, designers, developers, HR specialists, and everyone working with data.
- Teamly — a platform that combines a knowledge base, project management, and communication. Documents, tasks, and discussions are interconnected, creating a unified workspace.
- Kaiten — a tool for managing projects and documentation. Convenient when all materials — from technical specifications to results — need to be stored alongside tasks.
- EvaWiki — a tool for creating corporate knowledge bases. Suitable for storing instructions, regulations, and other important information with easy search and navigation.
For Security
When working outside the office, it’s especially important to protect corporate data: documents, correspondence, and system access. Each service should be evaluated in terms of security. A messenger, video conferencing tool, task tracker, or email hosted in a public cloud can be vulnerable if attention isn’t paid to its origin, protection methods, and support.
For example, in eXpress, user authentication occurs through three independent channels: email, SMS, and password. If the phone is stolen, all data on the device can be deleted remotely via a server command.
Cybercriminals invent new ways to steal data every day, so it’s crucial not to neglect security. Theft of personal data is a personal loss, while theft of commercial information entails administrative liability that can seriously impact the business.
Tips for Managers: How to Stay a Leader at a Distance
Managing people you don’t see every day isn’t easy. Below are a few tips to help you build an effective remote management system.
Look for Independent Thinkers, Not Just Executors
When hiring, pay special attention to a candidate’s soft skills. Qualities such as self-organization, responsibility, attentiveness, proactivity, and problem-solving ability come to the forefront.
Focus on Results, Not Hours
Micromanagement and remote work are incompatible. You don’t need employees to be “online” all the time. Set clear, measurable goals (KPIs can help) and evaluate outcomes, not processes. Trust is the main currency of remote management.
Document Agreements
Another important aspect involves legal and organizational formalities. A simple verbal agreement isn’t enough. It’s necessary to determine in advance how the employee is officially hired, who compensates internet and equipment costs, and how occupational safety issues are handled. All this should be fixed in an additional agreement — it protects both parties and prevents conflicts.
Build a Culture
In an office, culture forms naturally through daily interactions, while in remote work, it must be built consciously. Organize informal online meetings, publicly recognize colleagues’ achievements, and hold regular one-on-one sessions. Corporate culture is the glue that keeps the team together, even when members are separated by thousands of kilometers.
Concluding Thoughts
Remote work is no longer a novelty but an established format. The key to its effectiveness lies in attention to detail. It’s especially important to watch for signs of burnout: the lack of boundaries between work and personal life can exhaust even the most engaged employees.
Clear communication rules help prevent misunderstandings: when, how, and through which channels the team discusses tasks and makes decisions should be defined in advance.
Choosing the right tools is equally important: they should ensure process transparency, collaboration, and security — not complicate interaction.
When these elements are in place, trust and productivity grow naturally — without loud declarations, but with tangible results.
