Why Employers Should Explore Work from Home Scheme in 2020

There was a time when working from home was just a vivid dream, but recently, there’s been a surge of jobs you can do from your own place. As the world becomes more connected, businesses can now explore work from home arrangements for their employees. People that aren’t on the work floor or do work that requires them to be onsite all the time can immediately start working from anywhere using emails, chats and conference calls from anywhere with a good internet connection. For human resources, this means adjusting operations to help the workforce adapt to their new working set-up while ensuring that productivity is maintained. But is this worth a try? Here are the top 4 reasons employers should explore the work from home scheme in 2020:

1. Increased Productivity

   Productivity for remote workers is higher because they are better equipped to avoid distractions. Allowing employees to work remotely also allows employers to hire the best of the best without any geographical restrictions. Employees are also happier and quit less than those who went into the office on a regular basis. On top of that, the benefits also extend to his bottom line with money saved because employees pay for their own computer, electricity and other utilities.

2. Work-Life Balance

   Workers wanting to do their jobs remotely isn’t surprising, with studies showing they would rather work from home for better work-life balance (91%), increased productivity/better focus (79%), less stress (78%), and to avoid a commute (78%). With clear guidelines and deliverables, along with regular monitoring to ensure that productivity is maintained, the result is more output-driven than anything else. Employees are mostly in favor of the work from home setup because of its flexibility and having an option to choose an environment to do their job effectively.

3. Reducing Health Risk

   Virus outbreaks have been all over the news recently and remote working is almost becoming a necessity for most employees. American workplaces are also urged to come up with contingency plans such as working from home to reduce the risk of acquiring viruses from public places, such as from public transport and crowded areas. We did not have such an option back in 2003 during the SARS outbreak, but we are somewhat luckier now that we have technology on our side.

4. Financial Benefits

   With the increasing price of petrol and public transportation fare, it is ideal to have employees work remotely, especially if their roles don’t require them to be physically present in the workplace. It’s one thing for the workers to save money from their daily allowance, it’s also another thing for the company to save from reduced office footprint. Fewer people in the office means less consumption of utilities.

Work from home is fairly becoming more popular in the tech industry, but non-tech companies are definitely catching onto the trend of utilizing technology to operate and monitor employees remotely.  Good communications and monitored collaboration also play a big role in remote working set-up to ensure that companies are getting what they need from employees, and employees are getting the feedback needed from the company.

Some companies are still concerned that, unwatched, their employees’ productivity will suffer, but the opposite is in fact true. Productivity and morale increase exponentially for remote workers, according to data. Other studies also support that happiness, motivation, and sense of freedom are generally stronger for working from home employees. Promising as it is, work from home policy requires a certain level of trust and commitment between employers and employees to become effective.