If you’re hiring for a remote or hybrid role, you’ll have seven times the applicants, according to CareerBuilder. The American worker has had a taste of remote work and they like it—a lot. CNBC reports that our employees don’t want to return to the office. It seems the benefits outweigh the drawbacks of remote work. But what are those benefits? We’ve found five that consistently seem to appeal to workers no matter their industry or position.
What Are The Benefits of Working From Home?
#1 Work/Life Balance
We know that remote workers are more productive, which in turn frees up their time for tasks they enjoy, chores, hobbies, and downtime. If you’re saving the time you would have commuted to and from an office, it gives you more time to run errands, take a class, or just get the kids off to school in a way that’s a little more relaxed.
#2 Less Stress
Let’s face it; commuting is stressful. Stress shortens your life. Before the pandemic, the average commute to and from work was at least an hour a day. That’s five hours a week and 20 hours a month returned to you when you don’t have to go to an office. Extra time means you can get more done and be less stressed when doing it. Eliminating the commute is better for your mental and physical health. You can use that extra time to go to the gym or take time to cook a healthy meal. Less stress gives you the freedom to enjoy your life.
#3 Saving Money
Working remotely saves the average employee $4,000 in gas, parking, or other costs of commuting. You can save money by making food at home and skip the professional dry cleaning wardrobe bill. But employers save too, on rent, electricity, and other occupancy costs associated with running an office. FlexJobs says employers saved more than $30 billion a day during the pandemic by allowing their employees to work from home.
#4 Lower Your Carbon Footprint
Before COVID, around 3.9 million people worked from home at least 50% of the time. This reduced gas emissions the equivalent of taking more than 600,000 cars off the road for a whole year. If this trend continues it can considerably reduce individual carbon footprints and reduce greenhouse gasses. There is even a reduction in heating, air conditioning, and lighting, which in turn reduces greenhouse gasses further but also improves air quality for the entire planet.
#5 Higher Productivity
There is data that proves now that remote workers are more productive. Working from home means you’ll have fewer interruptions from coworkers and less office politics to distract you. You can save time by avoiding the commute completely, which allows you to focus more on your work. Interestingly, remote work strips away the façade of employees who appear to work all the time but get very little done. Telecommuting is a production driven environment where the work itself is the KPIs that employers end up measuring—not who arrived at work early and stayed late.
Are You Working From Home?
For employers searching for a better way to manage remote workers, FoxHire offers an EOR platform that handles all of the little details of the hiring and employment process. We’re standing by to help. Find out more.
