The Future of Work from Home: Know the Perks

As the world slowly recuperates from Covid-19, organizations are making decisions on what the post-pandemic working environment will look like. Although some businesses cannot wait to bring their employees back into the office, other leaders are opting for hybrid models and even sticking with full-time work from home. Forbes reports that 74% of chief finance officers are planning to shift employees to remote work permanently, even after the crisis ends.

A significant reason for this unprecedented trend is the benefits that remote work brought into their overall operations. A separate Forbes report reveals that the transition to remote work increased employee productivity by 65%. This is because remote work allowed organizations to emphasize on the work done instead of the hours spent on specific tasks.

Steps & Ideas For Building A Strong Remote Work Culture

While remote work accelerated employee productivity and overall efficiency, many organizations are still contemplating adopting full-time work-from-policies (Work from home). Often, remote work can result in having team communication being fragmented and struggling to manage employee time. 

In this article, we’ll outline work-from-home advantages and disadvantages and highlight the perks of work from home (WFH) for organizations. 

Increased Productivity

As mentioned, increased productivity is perhaps one of the most unlikely benefits of allowing employees to work remotely. It is common for most leaders to assume that shifting to remote work can reduce productivity. Usually, remote employees work independently and without proper guidance, which could result in them to slack off and turn in tasks late. 

Surprisingly, this is far from the truth. In fact, the increased autonomy remote employees enjoy resulted in productivity growth. By working remotely, employees have more freedom to work on hours they find most productive. Business News Daily reveals that 1,004 employees said that remote work enabled them to devote more time on work assignments and increased their overall focus.

Unlike in the office, remote work eliminated two-minute chats, which are relatively common in the traditional work setting. These two-minute chats may not seem like a big deal, but they usually add up to a lot of time and productivity being lost. By eliminating these distractions, employees can remain focused on helping organizations achieve remote workplace productivity.

Access to Global Talent Pool

One of the benefits of remote working for business is it allows organizations to remove geographic obstacles and tap into a global talent market. This way, recruitment managers will no longer be constrained by their existing talent pools to mitigate skill shortages. 

Skill shortages are relatively common in technical fields such as project management, which requires businesses to hire a candidate with an online degree in project management. By tapping into a global talent market, organizations can find the right employee for the position. Access to a global talent pool can also reduce hiring and salary costs without undermining overall work quality.

By reducing employee expenses, organizations can leave much room for growth, which is essential in staying competitive in today’s market. However, for organizations to transition successfully to remote work, they should be adept in using work from home tools such as employee monitoring software or time tracking solutions to ensure cohesiveness and optimize business procedures. By monitoring employee performance, leaders can understand work patterns and trends and make it easier to work on employee performance improvement.  

Improves Employee Retention

The Benefits of Working From Home: Why The Pandemic Isn’t the Only Reason to Work Remotely

Employing strategies to minimize talent attrition is a key component of a successful organization. After all, the expense of employee turnover can adversely impact operational costs, company culture, productivity, customer experience, and revenue. By enabling remote work, organizations can increase work-life balance and increase overall employee safety.

This increases the likelihood of them to stay and avoid looking for opportunities elsewhere. An article from HubSpot reveals that remote workers are 13% more likely to stay at their current jobs for the next five years than their office counterparts. However, it is worth noting that transitioning to remote work is not a magic pill that would immediately result in employee retention. 

As a leader, you must cultivate a remote work culture that will affect employees positively and motivate them to be more invested in your organizational goals. This includes establishing a mentorship program or perhaps introducing flexible working arrangements that enable them to work more effectively on their tasks. Either way, improving work conditions and providing a room for them to grow is crucial in keeping them engaged and satisfied. 

4. Ensures Better Health

Health and work are connected. Often, work can lead and worsen health issues, but it can also be a support mechanism. Remote work, for instance, can provide the flexibility the people need to support their overall health at work and in life. Statistics from MHA  show that 97% of individuals think flexible working options such as work from home would have a positive and huge impact on their quality of lives. 

Remote work provides more balanced social lives. Often, office workers that work at a frenetic pace daily have less time for relationships, friends, and family. This is the exact opposite for remote workers, who can work at their pace and set time for specific activities outside work. 

Remote employees also tend to be less stressed than their office-based workers, since they cut out commute and traffic stressors. It also keeps them out of office politics, which allows for a quieter and more comfortable work environment. 

By reducing these stress-related work aspects, organizations can reduce absenteeism and ensure employees perform to the best of their abilities, resulting in a higher return on investment and overall efficiency.  

5. Promotes Tech-Savviness within the Organization

Having a tech-savvy and adaptive workforce is how companies benefit when employees work remotely. Technology is at the core of every remote work setting. By adopting work-from-home policies, organizations put themselves in the position of achieving better workplace collaboration and productive engagement. This is because remote work forces them to arm employees with the right technical skills necessary to handle the torrent of applications pouring in to remain competitive in their industry. 

By empowering employees with the right technology, you can reduce the time gap in resolving critical business issues. Thereby, ensuring quicker deliveries and enhancing the organization’s professional network and reputation. Tech-savvy employees are also more capable of leveraging and accessing business information on-the-go and apply it from anywhere at any time. 

This interoperability can be the difference-maker of a successful organization, especially when your competitors are trying to outrun you because it characterizes how you can initiate action or make smart decisions easily and quickly. Creating a tech-savvy working environment will also drive employees to search, discover, learn, and employ innovative and advanced business techniques. This ultimately results in finding better, effective, and quicker ways to finish tasks and accomplish desired business goals. 

Achieving the Business Benefits of Remote Work

Employee Productivity Tracking - Live Screen, Keystrokes, Web

Undertaking a permanent transition to remote work can be challenging and downright scary for businesses that do not know how to manage work from home employees. An excellent way to manage remote employees with confidence is to leverage an employee monitoring software solution such as RemoteDesk to track employee performance and productivity. RemoteDesk which is geared with dynamic remote work features such as room scan, webcam monitoring, and desktop screen recording offers a comprehensive product demonstration in addition to its quote-based pricing packages.

RemoteDesk delivers employee productivity, compliance enforcement, while providing clear transparency, accountability & risk management.