Here's why your team should stay working remotely
Around the world governments are eager for economies to reopen, but does that mean you should bring your employees back to the office?
Many of the world’s biggest companies have decided to stay working remotely. Atlassian and Twitter have given every employee the option to stay remote working in perpetuity, while Google and Facebook aren’t recalling their teams any time soon.
It’s for good reason: working from home has advantages for both employers and employees, boosting productivity and job satisfaction while reducing business costs. Here are the top 3 reasons why you should stay working from home:
Put your people first
With the right approach, working from home offers major improvements to your employees’ job satisfaction and work-life balance, as well as boosting their productivity and motivation. According to our survey of 423 businesses, 45% of employees say they are more productive at home, and 51% prefer to work from home.
Here’s why:
Get rid of the commute
According to the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) 2017 survey, the average Australian city worker spends almost 5 hours a week commuting to work.
That’s a lot of wasted free time, and the urban rush hour is rarely a relaxing experience. Working from home gives that time back to your employees.
In our Future of Remote Work whitepaper, we asked survey respondents the number one advantage of working from home. 61% said it was cutting out their commute, 13% more than the next most popular reason - increased flexibility. Removing the commute can be the difference between workers arriving stressed before work has even begun and a team that is relaxed and ready to start the day.
Increased flexibility
The 9 to 5 office grind was created more than a century ago and is not optimized for the modern world. Today’s employees want the flexibility to arrange work around their lifestyle and family. The tools and practices used for remote working also enable employees to work more independently, with greater control over their schedule.
This means less for your workers to worry about when it comes to childcare and other responsibilities, and makes it easier to spend time on recreational activities.
Maintain your work culture
What happens when you give people the tools to manage their own time? When managed well, remote workers with flexible schedules are more motivated and more productive.
That is not the only benefit remote working offers to your team culture. Trust your team to manage their time and give them the tools to collaborate. As a result, they will gain increased ownership and responsibility for projects, resulting in a more proactive approach.
You don’t have to lose the spontaneous teamwork and workplace banter of the office either. In fact, organizing your team using task-based apps like Trello can improve teamwork. Employees can set up tasks and sub-tasks in seconds, adding colleagues to the task and sharing live updates on progress.
Dedicated communication channels for different projects and off-topic chat help keep conversations focused, and enable workers to easily mute or leave the chat for deep work.
Access new sources of talent
Working remotely doesn’t just benefit your existing employees. It also lets you hire the best talent from anywhere in the world, without many of the usual hiring costs. Restricting your business to hiring in your local area can limit your ability to find the best talent and grow your business.
The perfect hire for your company may not even live in your country, let alone your town or city. Ignoring this global talent pool means choosing your employees from a tiny subset of people with the skills you need.
This is especially useful when you need highly specialized or niche skills. Unless you are located in a regional hub for teaching or employing those skills, it can be a challenge to find someone with the experience and knowledge you need.
Drive your costs down
Remote working cuts your costs in a number of ways:
Rent
The Building 20 Future of Remote Work survey found that Australian employers could save up to $1654 per employee per year on rent if employees spent half of their time working from home. Moving to a fully remote workforce could save $7500 per employee a year.
Furthermore, working from home means you don’t need offices in expensive central locations to access a wider talent pool. Instead you can scale your business without acquiring new property, greatly reducing the cost of rent per employee and removing a major financial barrier to growth.
Utilities and Amenities
Rent is not the only cost that goes down when you switch to remote working. As the number of office workers increases, so does the cost of:
Power
Climate control
Kitchen supplies
Cleaning
Maintenance
The additional costs per employee are easy to underestimate, but they quickly add up.
Conclusion
Remote work offers benefits to your employees’ motivation and productivity at work, and their ability to relax and enjoy their time outside of work. It also enables your company to hire the best in the world, wherever they may be, while cutting unnecessary costs at the same time. Download our whitepaper to find out more.