Telecommuting: Why Working from Home Just Makes Sense

October 3rd, 2007 • Related • Filed Under • by admin

There’s a segment of the population that could be very productive and helpful to society, but are unable to due to the constraints in their life. These people are single parents, disabled individuals, individuals who live in very rural areas and other people that just can’t make it to work every day through no fault of their own. Many people want to work; they just don’t have the opportunity to do so. These people are perfect candidates for positions that would allow them to work from their homes, but many companies are still dragging their heels when it comes to telecommuting. When we look at the issue in depth, we realize that telecommuting just makes sense for everyone involved.

First and foremost, it makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. For each less employee you have at a location, that’s one less employee you have to provide an office and a parking space for. The business also saves the water and electricity used by that employee as well. Having one employee working at home won’t make much of a different, but if a company were to allow a couple of hundred people to work at home, they could save an entire office building’s worth of expenses.

Recent studies also indicate that individuals who work from home are also much happier and much more productive. The Wall Street Journal conducted a study of 10,000 workers and found that job satisfaction and company loyalty were much higher among telecommuters than regular office workers.

When employees work from home, they have a lot of added flexibility in their schedule. Sometimes employees have to leave the company because of schedule constraints and other obligations and then the company has to pay all the cost of recruiting and training a new employee. There’s a good chance that many employees could keep their jobs if they were allowed to work from home instead of having to quit, which would also save the company a substantial amount of money.

Many employers are still suspicious of letting people work from home because they think that in order for people to be efficient and do the work they are supposed to, they have to be monitored. This is true for some people, and they wouldn’t be well suited for a work at home job, but there are just as many people who are productive by their nature and will produce a lot regardless of where their work location is at. There’s no reason that these types of people can’t work very effectively from home.

There are some positions where working from home is infeasible, such as in manufacturing, but there are a lot of positions that could be done from home just fine, and it would save companies a substantial amount of money and give their employees much needed flexibility.