The remote working revolution has arrived—with innumerable benefits of remote work coming to the forefront. With technology (like smartphones, cloud collaboration and video conferencing) becoming more widespread, remote working jobs are becoming more common. The idea of being able to work from anywhere you want offers great work-life balance. Some prefer to enjoy the daily grind of office life. Some prefer working from the comfort of their own homes. There are scientific arguments for both. In this article, we will go toe-to-toe and find which one is better for your business.
Working from home has increased in popularity by 115 percent since 2005 with 3.9 million Americans now working at home at least half the time. This growth has been seen due to large businesses hiring remote workers including Amazon, Dell, Cigna, Salesforce, Philips, Nielsen and many others. Not only large but also small businesses are looking for professionals for one-off jobs instead of hiring a full-time employee. Why have they done so? They have witnessed and wish to capitalize on the benefits of remote work.
Improved Employee Retention
A Stanford study showed that when call center workers worked remotely, they outperformed their on-site peers. The reason behind it was they took less sick leaves and shorter breaks. They were also found to be more satisfied with the job and tend to quit less often. Moreover, remote working also helps retain working parents with childcare responsibilities—one of the most important benefits of remote work.
Access to Large Pool of Applicants
Businesses can also witness the benefits of remote work if they are located in high-cost living area. With remote jobs, they can have access to more skillful people at less pay as compare to hire on-site workers.
Possible Gains in Productivity
Is working from home more productive than working in an office? The productivity of remote working has been a lot in the debates. One such popular cited study is from 2014, where the co-founders of Chinese travel website CTrip let some of their employees to work remotely on daily basis, and compare their productivity to their on-site peers. Keeping other factors same, remote workers made 13.5 percent more calls than their office workers. In more recent times, the benefits of remote work have manifested in all possible industries and all around the world.
Financial Benefits
Your business can save a lot of money on utilities and real estate—one of the most compelling benefits of remote work. Because if you hire remote workers, you need fewer on-site workers which mean you need a smaller space. When a business moves to a more flexible working scenario, they are more likely to put things in the cloud. This is not only good from an environmental standpoint but also from utilities and extra costs (such as paper, trash, recycling) which seems smaller but certainly adds up. Companies can save millions of dollars in real estate when they hire remote workers instead of on-site workers.
What’s Right for Your Business?
Fortunately, today’s remote working capabilities are more sophisticated than doing conversations over the phone. Being accessible to chat, email, video conferences, cloud collaboration software, and a plethora of other technologies has made it all possible for almost any on-site job to be done remotely. Working remotely is a latest growing trend that you can see with the changing workplaces and more jobs being tied to computers.
