The Coronavirus (COVID-19) changed daily life in one way or another for just about every person around the world. The emergence of the virus had us all reconsidering our hygiene habits, and thinking twice before shaking hands or even getting too close to anyone we walked past.
But what the coronavirus also forced many companies to reconsider is their work from home policy. The ability to work remotely was once considered a luxury for employees, but when the contagious virus began to take hold across the United States, working from home became an absolute necessity.
The rapid change in the way companies are doing business may not have been an optional one, but there were many lessons learned regarding working remotely that arose from the experience. Here’s why working remotely is an absolute necessity in the 21st century, and not just during times of public health crises.
It Limits Business Interruptions
As we learned with COVID-19, certain events are completely unpredictable, and capable of throwing companies completely out of alignment. Part of the reason the coronavirus impacted companies so significantly is because many of them didn’t have the capability for their employees to effectively work from home, so operations screeched to a standstill.
By implementing strategic and effective work from home policies, companies will be able to minimize the risk presented by unforeseen circumstances that make it difficult or impossible for employees to make it into the office. This ensures companies have the opportunity to continue to function if their workforce can’t be physically present at the office.
It Improves Employee Satisfaction
There have been lots of studies done on working from home and employee satisfaction, and many of them yield the same result; people like working from home. According to this study published by Stanford economics professor Nicholas Bloom, the ability to work from home does indeed make people happier, both personally and professionally.
The study backed up its conclusion with statistics. Employees who have the option to work from home, “were 9 percent more engaged than their in-office co-workers (measured by the percentage of time each hour they were actually logged into the company’s call-taking system and doing their jobs),” and, “reported shorter breaks and fewer sick days and took less time off,” so it isn’t just conjecture to say working from home improves employee satisfaction.
Everybody Else is Doing It..
OK, we know. “Everybody else is doing it,” is never a good justification for..well, anything. Since we were kids we’ve been taught not to blindly follow our friends into dumb situations, and to think for ourselves. In the case of working from home, though, everybody else is doing it, so you need to do it too.
In order to keep up with your competition, you need to understand your competitors both in their shortcomings and successes. If your employee’s (or prospective employees) see that your company doesn’t offer the option of working from home while other companies in your industry do, that is not going to help your employee retention and satisfaction rates.
As Bob Dylan famously sang, “The times they are a-changin’,” sometimes quicker than others. While it may take some time for business owners to fully come to terms with the concept of allowing their employees to work from home, it is a trend that can’t be ignored. Don’t risk losing your employees to a business owner who is ready to trust his or her employees with the freedom to work from home.
Categorised in: Business Management, Business Transformation, computer