As remote work continues to grow in acceptance, significance, and popularity with employers and employees alike, studies indicate that there are many benefits to all parties concerned, including businesses many of which are reporting an increase in bottom line numbers.
Here are 9 remote work benefits that might surprise you.
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Improves Work Output
Stanford University researchers found that the company’s remote employees delivered better work output than the employees who worked in a physical location after a two-year study among people who remotely. The difference was nearly an extra day of output per week. Regardless of the pandemic situation, 75% of the employees agree on their productivity increase in a survey conducted by Boston Consulting Group.
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Lowers Attrition
The 50% decrease in the Stanford University study in attrition among home-based workers shows that the people who worked remotely were less likely to leave the company for other employment opportunities. Furthermore, 81% of workers would be more loyal to their employers if they had flexible work options.
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Decrease in Absenteeism
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends staying home if you’re sick, so remote workers are already better placed. As a bonus, when remote workers feel a little unwell but can still work if needed, they can work from home without using up a sick day. And employers don’t have to lose a day of productivity due to health reasons.
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More Workforce Diversity
Hiring remote employees regardless of gender and gender identity, race, ethnicity, and geographical boundaries help companies recruit a truly diverse workforce. Because the talent pool for remote workers has no geographical limits, the opportunities are exponentially greater to build a global workforce that meets diversity.
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Reduction in Costs for Employers
Even during pre-covid times, the statistics confirm that working remotely reduces business expenses. By some estimates, allowing employees to work remotely 50 percent of the time saves employers approximately $11,000 per employee. Research has found that remote work reduces costs such as overheads, gasoline, and electricity drastically for businesses.
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Higher Employee Savings
Remote worker’s net savings are drastically more than those who work at a physical location. TECLA, a global IT recruiting company, made waves after establishing the financial stats and figures that their remote workers saved. The saved money is approximately $7,000, resulting from reducing or eliminating the cost of fuel, housing, food, clothing, and child care.
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Reduces Stress
Remote work does help in improving work-life balance. A survey conducted by FlexJobs asked 3,900 people about how work impacts their mental health. Of the 2,100 people who reported they had a mental illness, such as anxiety or depression, 80% said that more flexibility in their job would help them better manage their mental health.
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Benefits for Environment
Remote work has tangible benefits for the environment. For example, if 3.9 million people worked from home just half the time, it would reduce the number of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere is equivalent to removing 600,000 cars from the road for an entire year!
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Remote Work is the Future
Upwork’s 2020 Future Workforce Pulse Report estimates that over 25% of the American workforce will be working remotely in 2021. And 36.2 million Americans will be functioning remotely by 2025 which is an increase of 16.8 million people compared to pre-pandemic numbers. The pandemic drastically accelerated the adoption of remote work. Companies like Coinbase, Dropbox, Shopify, and Twitter, to name a few, have decided that remote work works and are letting their employees work from home permanently.
