Work from home is the practice of employees doing their jobs from a location other than a central office operated by the employer. Such locations could involve an employee’s home, a co-working or other shared space, a private office, or any other place outside of the traditional corporate office building or campus.
Work from home has become increasingly popular because it offers benefits for both employers as well as employees alike. It also gained a great deal of renewed attention as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced many organizations to quickly shift from a traditional face-to-face work environment to a fully remote workforce for health as well as safety reasons.
Enhanced business continuity
Virtual teams are often more naturally adaptable because they do not need to be in the same location to do their jobs. This can be a boon for business continuity planning, particularly in any unexpected or emergency scenarios where employees would suddenly be unable to work on-site.
Recruiting as well as hiring advantages
Hiring for a work-from-home employee can greatly expand a manager’s pool of potential candidates, because they do not need to be local as well as / or the company does not need to offer expensive relocation packages. This can be particularly beneficial to any recruiter or hiring manager operating in an especially competitive local labor market, or facing skills shortages for particular roles.
Decreased or eliminated commutes
A work-from-home employee tends to spend less time traveling to as well as from their work location, especially if they opt to work in a home office. This often means that work-from-home employee regains significant time in their lives each week. Someone who would otherwise spend 30 minutes commuting each way would save five hours a week by working at home, in addition to saving on transportation costs.
Reduced need for corporate office space
Organizations in the presence of a significant remote workforce usually require less physical office space, which means savings as well as greater long-term flexibility.
Healthy culture
High-performing virtual teams usually have cultures of trust as well as teamwork, often focused more on results than on “face time” or hours spent in the office. A culture that promotes remote work also involves supportive management that believes in the remote approach as well as empowers individuals as well as teams to be successful in the presence of this style of work.
Communication as well as collaboration tools
Remote workers need to be able to work together as if they were all in the same location. This requires secure, high-quality applications as well as platforms for technologies like chat, videoconferencing, file sharing, remote desktops, as well as other regular business needs.
To sum it up
Work from home requires a mix of the right culture, processes as well as technology geared specifically around enabling virtual teams to work successfully from anywhere. Culturally, for work from home to be successful there needs to be an assumption that a person or team is not going to work off-site as a norm. While there is no single blueprint for this strategy, successful work-from-home employees usually share some common characteristics.
The long-term popularity of working from home is tied to the upsides it can offer, involving reduced or eliminated commuting times, recruiting as well as hiring advantages, as well as productivity improvements.
Contact us for more information.
No Comments yet!