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Engineering leadership | Blog Post

7 Benefits of Remote Work: Employer Edition

Wes Mitchell-Lewis

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With COVID 19 came the abrupt and dramatic change in how companies organized their workforces. Suddenly, restrictions were in place, lockdowns were present, and the future was deeply uncertain. But in this environment, some companies thrived.

These companies were able to pivot towards a growing new paradigm: remote workforces. A remote workforce doesn’t function for all industries, sadly, but for those who can realize many benefits of remote work.

From increased productivity to lower overhead costs, the benefits of remote work are clear. Higher employee retention rates can be directly tied to the advantages of working from home, as employees are able to handle daily tasks more readily, connect with friends and family, reduce stress due to commutes, and save money. 

For the business, the benefits are just as obvious. Anything that reduces the overall overhead is a plus, but you also get the advantage of a highly motivated workforce, with increased performance. Another added benefit to remote work is that you can tap a far larger talent pool than a traditional geographically fixed office location. 

No longer do you have to weigh the costs of paying for a skilled worker to move to your company’s HQ, now you can arrange the contract so that neither party endures a loss, and all sides benefit. The employee is happy, you save money, productivity improves, and retention increases. As more of your workforce transitions to this model, there is a strong tendency for employees to remain with the company – a key challenge in this day and age of employee retention struggles across numerous industries.

Benefits Of Remote Working For Employers

Productivity Boosts

Research indicates that people are both happier at home and more able to focus on work tasks. With no office distractions, employees feel more capable of meeting deadlines which has a cumulative effect on overall business growth and success. Workers also reduce their error rates thanks to the drop in distractions, which is a great advantage of working from home. 

Superior Performance

When employees are able to fully customize their stations to their liking, they have a notable degree of improvement in their ability to reduce errors. Work/life balance is also cited as being a critical subject for many high quality employees, and if an employer can offer that enticing element it will let them secure top talent.  

Happier Teams

Thanks to the reduction in stressors, employees tend to be significantly happier than their office counterparts. While the reasons vary, most cite the elimination (or reduction) of the commute, the savings associated with this, the freeing up of significant time at home, and the ability to focus on tasks.

This also leads to a sense of self-agency, which can help improve the creativity of employees and give them the inspiration to speak up in meetings to offer profitable ideas that otherwise may have gone untapped. 

More Flexible Work Hours

This may seem like a clearly employee focused topic, but the benefits of remote work for employers extends here as well. By creating a flexible schedule system, you can begin to expand your operations onto an international level – without worrying about a majority of workers in any single timezone, you can build on the talent acquisition pool increases from remote work to out compete other peer companies.

On top of that, management and regular staff all see increases in their happiness and productivity when given flexible hour options. 

Another advantage of remote working with flexible hours is being able to fill gaps due to absences more readily. All of these factors collate into a self-sustaining culture of expansion and improvement, feeding into the happiness, productivity, and growth of the business. 

Improved Employee Retention

Research continues to demonstrate that the benefits of remote work lead to higher retention for employers. Most employees in this day and age quickly hop from job to job to seek higher wages, leaving employers scrambling to fill in gaps or plug lost knowledge from brain drain and other effects.

With an alluring remote work package, you can retain top talent and help build back some employee loyalty by letting them keep the advantages of working from home while still meeting company growth objectives. Everyone wins.

A Global Talent Pool

A really unique benefit of remote work is the ability to hire anyone from around the planet, so long as they have a working internet connection. Can’t find the right engineer at the price you can afford in America? Expand your network out to Asia, Europe and South America. 

Struggling to fill jobs despite higher wages? Look at other global economies and see what is available in their workforce. Don’t be afraid to seek international talent – it is a huge untapped resource and can instantly vault your company into greater productivity.

Research has continued to prove the value of a diverse work force – creativity dramatically increases and collaboration between different cultural groups results in a more flexible workplace culture that lets you pivot to emerging markets far more easily than homogenous peers. 

Lower Overhead

The nemesis of profit is overhead; office property costs, the energy costs, the rental spaces, the maintenance, the equipment, the paper prices, all of it adds up. But because of remote work, a company can wash away a majority of that, converting what was once a cost sink into a profit. If you have a fully remote team, there’s no need for a physical office space.

This translates as well into savings in technology, equipment, materials and taxes. If employees have their own technology already, you no longer need to provide it for them and worry about the annual upgrades to keep up with ever changing technology. Another advantage of remote work is that it helps to reduce environmental impact, a growing trend among the best companies in the world. To attract that top talent, it’s becoming popular to appeal to how green the company is compared to competitors. 

Final Thoughts on the Benefits of Remote Work

Remote working isn’t going away anytime soon, with many companies choosing to switch fully to remote work as the cost savings and other benefits have proven to be so significant that it isn’t economical to do otherwise. Other companies are choosing hybrid models, switching workers to remote when possible.

In this changing economic landscape, it makes good business sense to compete with peers by appealing to what top workers want and if top workers want what’s going to save you money anyways, it’s a clear decision on what direction to take.


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