Winning from Home Part 2: Employers Benefit

When it comes to working from home, everybody wins! In our last article, we looked at how employees win because working from home saves them time and money from commuting. Employers are another group that benefits because working from home makes doing business more productive and more efficient.

Winning with Office Space
Renting or owning office space is one of the biggest expenses of operating a business, and as your business grows, so does the need for more floor space. Attempting to onboard additional staff when you don't have the physical room to do it can make the work environment interesting, to say the least. It can mean fitting desks inside of broom closets, long lines to the bathroom, and a crowded break room that can't accommodate everyone taking their lunch at the same time. One of the easiest ways to save money from having to upgrade to a bigger facility is to have your employees work remotely. It's much easier and less expense to implement remote technology for your business than it is to find a bigger facility.

Winning with Operating Expenses
Running an office can also eat up a lot of your company's budget. The more people coming to work will translate to higher operating costs like larger utility bills and more resources being consumed like coffee, toilet paper, birthday cake, reams of paper, and much more. All of these office items seem like small potatoes, but they can really add up when you're dealing with a growing workforce.

Winning with Improving Morale
In our last article, we looked at how 25% of office workers interviewed admitted that they would take a reduction in salary if it meant that they could work from home. The same survey also revealed that 78% of employees would forgo a free meal for the opportunity to work from home. This means that your attempts to improve office morale by providing employees with perks like food, may be better spent by just giving them the option to work from home.

Winning with Technology Expenses
By allowing your staff to work from home your business will also save on technology expenses. The traditional arrangement for employees that come to the office is that you provide them with a workstation, and as you know, purchasing and operating computers is a major business expense. In many work-from-home scenarios, you can require employees to use their personal computers. In most cases, the employee will be happy to use their personal equipment if it means doing work from their couch. Directive can even help provide your at-home workers with remote IT support to keep their computers running smoothly so that your company's operations won't be hindered by downtime.

Winning with Productivity
The biggest way that employers benefit by having their team work from home is that they're more productive. In a study by CompTIA Research, it was discovered that 67% of businesses that implemented a work from home policy saw an increase in productivity. This increase in productivity can be attributed to many things. The biggest factor may be that your office is full of distracting people. Working from home means not dealing with people's distracting drama and useless chit chat, which allows an employee to focus more on their task and put out a better quality product.

As you can see, working from home doesn't just benefit employees; employers come out on top too! Implementing a work-from-home policy may require adding remote networking tools so that employees can connect to your company's network from anywhere. You will also want to implement a strong network security solution because working remotely means there will be more network access points to cover. There are a host of solutions that will allow you to stay connected and monitor your home-based workers so that you can feel confident about their performance. To learn more about what it takes for your business to implement remote technology, give Directive a call at 607.433.2200.