While up to 70 percent of small businesses were wiped out by COVID-19 restrictions those left standing were either prepared or quickly adopted work at home models to survive and sustain the long-term effects of a world lost to a pandemic.
While subsidies prolonged the demise of small businesses as the coronavirus continued to spread and the subsidies ceased to provide assistance, businesses began closing at an alarming rate. Now a solid 30 percent of small businesses survive due to previously embracing telecommuting or by discovering ways to modify their business practices enough to adopt some type of telework adaptation or continue to provide services to a customer base that may be on lockdown for an extended period of time.
As the effects of COVID-19 continue to spread, the surviving businesses are discovering there are huge benefits of working from home for employers.
Benefits of Working from Home for Employers
1. Reduction of Operating Expenses
It is far less expensive to support a teleworking workforce. HR expenses are reduced by being able to hire outside of your local geographic base because a teleworking workforce need not be restricted by location. The business is not having to provide the workspace, which is saving an enormous cost in overhead expenses. Leases for office space may still need to be paid for space that is not being used, but the cost of operating and providing services to the employees is greatly reduced or eliminated. Right now, we are seeing a huge number of businesses finding ways to back out of those leases and opting not to renew them, as they plan on continuing to take advantage of the benefits of teleworking post-pandemic.
2. Flexible Work Schedules
Working from home flex-time is one of the important factors that are responsible for the increase in employee productivity where workers are empowered to adjust their work at home schedules to accommodate personal errands, doctor appointments, and family issues. Flextime for telecommuters is also a huge perk when attracting new hires, incentivizing current employees, reducing sick leave, and HR expenses.
3. Increased Productivity
The big surprise for those employers new to the world of telecommuting was shock at the more than 20% increase in employee productivity by allowing them to work from home. Why? Contributing factors include reduction of stress associated with commuting and keeping up appearances and flexible work schedules which help employees to focus more on tasks at hand with fewer interruptions which are inevitable in the office setting.
Remote workers can set up and customize their homework area to their heart’s content. This nesting helps to create a more supportive environment that maximizes everyone’s productivity far exceeding what might be appropriate for decorating one’s office or cubicle.
Generally, remote workers are happier, and this increased enthusiasm can be measured in terms of productivity as well.
It turns out that using more emerging technologies used in connecting, directing, communicating, and even brainstorming with staff over the Internet is saving huge costs associated with inner-office communications and in-house or off-site meetings. Live face-to-face interactions are replaced by using email, text, telephonic interaction, and real-time videoconferencing.
4. Carbon Footprint Reduction
Employers who fully embrace the telecommuting work from home model are helping to make the world a better place by reducing their carbon footprint. By greatly reducing the commute to and from work on a regular basis, employers are helping to reduce toxic emissions.
Even though these are huge benefits of working from home for employers, the transition for the newcomers to the remote working world of these pandemic-inspired times, has been a challenge for many, because we all know too well that it can be difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.
These new tricks include embracing technology to empower a mobile interconnected workforce by using personal devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers, using Wi-Fi-enabled systems like instant messaging, cloud computing, video chat, and VoIP communications. This can be quite a leap for older employees who are not well-acquainted with this tech, while those younger employees, are already using these technologies and are ready to go now.
The biggest concern to overcome is an employer’s paranoia associated with being able to observe the workforce in action while on-the-clock. The idea of having workers out-of-sight is just too much for the micromanager to imagine. Still, there are remote monitoring technologies that can be put in place to track productivity and ease their minds. But be aware that the most successful telecommuting employers are tracking productivity as a whole, not based on minute-by-minute accountability. This allows employees to be accountable for their own productivity, which when empowered to do so, may not work restrictive hours, but are much more likely to stay up late, overwork, or work weekends to keep their numbers up.