Working remotely is no longer something exotic. Job seekers are daring to put this format on their list of essential requirements, and employers are more willing to respond to them. However, working from home is not only a comfortable couch for the employee, and no need to drive to the office. Remote work is also beneficial to the company itself. How can companies advantage from transferring their employees to working from home?

Cutting Expenses and Unlimited Recruiting

The first and most obvious benefit of a remote office is reducing office rent and maintenance costs. Utility bills for a multi-story office, packed to the brim with equipment, add up to a significant sum. Add to this the cost of cleaning, tea, coffee, stationery, security equipment, and other supplies, and these pieces take away a significant part of the profits.

For example, Facebook has already decided to move up to half of the employees to working remotely within 5-10 years. The company likes it so much. Those employees who do well from home have already been allowed to stay out of the office until the end of 2021.

Indeed, in a remote work environment, it doesn’t matter at all where your employee is. What is important is how they work. And the quality of work can be easily assessed using employee monitoring software. In this way, geographical restrictions in recruitment are erased. And from the employee’s point of view, a company that allows you to work remotely gets a hundred points toward attractiveness.

Thus, by giving up, at least partially, the traditional office, you can strengthen the team, not weaken it.

Employee Efficiency

The results of remote employee monitoring show that 30% of office employees work remotely more efficiently than in the office. Preliminary results of a global study, Work From Home by Colliers, show that the vast majority of traditional office workers are willing to consider working partially remotely without harming their productivity. It is possible that this conclusion will be taken into account by companies and will lead to a gradual change in approaches to the formation of convenient, flexible, secure office space. About 76% of employees said they would like to be working remotely from one to several times a week. Some of the advantages that employees saw were lower travel and lunch costs, the ability to plan their own day, no dress code (a manager who walks around the house in his pajamas has become an Internet meme), and more time for family.

Remote Work Requires Operation

Another conclusion of the experts is that working from home doesn’t become fast, efficient, and convenient for everyone on its own. You should not expect that you will immediately get great results by sending everyone home and distributing tasks.

A lot depends on the employers themselves. Have they succeeded in creating a comfortable environment for workers? Do they have the equipment they need? Do they have access to all the information they need? What about cybersecurity? Are employees comfortable interacting with each other and solving work tasks together? Would team productivity suffer without implementing employee monitoring tools?

How you answer these questions determines the effectiveness of remote work. And unless the company wants to feel like a dinosaur shortly, it will have to adapt to the new era, where remote work plays a big role.

Increased Discipline and Productivity

Any day in a remote job without a completed task is immediately striking, while in an office, you can imitate work for months by being present or prolonging the time it takes to complete a task. War often breaks out between bosses and employees: coffee breaks ten times a day are banned, cameras are put up, employee monitoring systems are implemented, and tardiness is punished. But even a person tied to a chair for eight hours will find a way to do the task slowly or not do it at all. By working remotely, companies have a better chance of working for results, not for process. What’s more, employees don’t ask questions when managers ask them to install employee monitoring tools on their devices and report their working progress daily. They realize it’s more convenient even for them to track their time and check how they cope with various assignments.

Face-to-face Meetings Increase Loyalty

Intrigues, conspiracies, prejudices of employees against each other based on differences in image, smell, and preferences for adjusting the temperature in the room create sabotage and a drop in productivity. And no analysis of reports from employee monitoring apps can help. People who do not meet in real life treat each other with respect, based only on the results of work and the manner of communication in Zoom and Slack. When your employees meet less frequently at corporate events and celebrations, they are friendlier to each other and more loyal to the company.

Elimination Or Reduction Of Subjectivity

Remote workforces businesses to rely on automated timekeeping and employee monitoring software, and objective data from the reports of such systems become the basis for evaluating employees’ work, while the personal factor and psychological sympathy of colleagues or management become of secondary importance. Such things as an employee’s good looks, their ability to support office small-talk, create a semblance of work lose significance. You are guided by dry numbers, and this is highly effective.

Home Offices Require Less Investment

The entire team must be provided with computers, smartphones, headsets, and subscriptions to paid services: messengers, employee monitoring, graphical tools, cloud storage space, etc. However, when you work in an office, there are many more things you need. It seems that switching to working from home requires additional financial investment, although, in fact, you can easily move to a comfortable home environment with the same set of equipment and applications that you use in the office.

Companies Get More Control

All companies fear a decrease in productivity and, consequently, a loss in company profits with the transition to remote work. However, practice shows that it is easier for managers to control employees through team leadership skills and necessary tools remotely. As a rule, calls and meetings become shorter but occur more frequently; team members regularly submit progress reports, and team leaders monitor their performance and identify those who are wasting time using employee monitoring and time tracking tools.

At the very beginning of the 2010s, there was no hint of an upcoming office revolution. Less than 15% of employees were interested in remote work and flexible working conditions. Today, both employees and business owners are realizing the benefits of this schedule. Employees are becoming more productive, company profits are increasing, and rental and operating costs are going down. Try remote working for your business, and you may not be able to give it up again.

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