Traditionally, remote work has been looked up with slightly shift stares. Many employers believed that employees would be easily distracted at home, away from the sight of their managers.
Until a decade ago, remote work was fairly rare, only available for special instances of perhaps sickness or necessary travel. However, with the pandemic, businesses saw that allowing your employees remote work was the only way to stay afloat.
With teleconferencing and telework technologies, more and more companies are moving to buy VPNs to secure their online parameters and build remote work set-ups to make more efficient use of their resources.
It would be almost sinful not to mention that remote work has helped support local healthcare systems immensely by preventing the spread of COVID and other viral infections. It has helped employees develop a better work-life balance, focus on their health, and find time for their children, promoting a healthier, happier, more affluent society.
But is remote working effective when it comes to actual day-to-day business operations? Let’s take a closer look.
How effective is remote working?
A decade ago, a significant concern that employers had about letting their employees work remotely was the lack of productivity. It was common to assume that the workforce would become lazy and unproductive if their managers did not constantly supervise them.
However, Airtasker recently surveyed around 1,004 full-time employees, out of which almost half were working remotely, all across the United States, and studied their work habits productivity.
As it turns out, remote workers were more productive than people coming into the office. On average, it was found that remote workers worked for an additional 1.4 days per month, which added up to 17 more days than other employees.
Another key finding was that remote workers worked for an additional 10 minutes a day on a daily basis. Furthermore, only 15% of remote workers said that their boss distracted them from work compared to 22% of office-based employees.
The study concluded that remote working is highly effective for both productivity and overall work performance.
How remote work is benefitting businesses
Fortunately, the benefits posed by remote work are isomorphic, leading to around 58.6% of companies starting to offer remote positions only last year. Not only that, approximately 74% of companies in the United States now plan to shift to remote working permanently after seeing the undeniable boost in productivity and business performance.
Here are some ways remote work has helped businesses boom and evolve ever since the pandemic began.
Reduced operating costs
Fewer to no employees in the offices translates into fewer overheads by cutting down on needed supplies, computers, work desks, and electricity usage.
Further costs noted to go down were insurance, office furnishings, utilities, repair, upkeep, etc.
A recent analysis revealed that IBM saved $50 million in real estate alone by allowing employees to work remotely.
Improved employee retention rate
It’s no secret that hiring a new employee is expensive. An average company in the United States spends over $4000 on hiring a new employee, and when an employee leaves, it takes somewhere around 52 days to fill the position.
Since remote work is flexible and has proven to result in greater employee happiness and satisfaction, 75% of the companies participating in a study have reported that their employee retention rate has dramatically improved ever since they have started allowing remote work.
Better chances of finding top talent
Brilliant people are rare to find, and companies restricting themselves to local hiring tend to lose out on some of the most talented people. Remote working opens companies up to a much bigger talent pool, which increases their chances of hiring people who will later be assets to the business.
Conclusion
As more studies keep discovering the benefits of having remote teams and working employees, businesses have expanded to a global user and employee base. Since remote work has proven to be highly beneficial to business, more and more companies are looking forward to expanding their teams remotely.
