Working from Home: Employer and Employee Benefits

You can imagine the benefits of working from home for employees: lounging on the couch, drinking hot chocolate, taking an afternoon nap. But most of those benefits are imaginary—and untrue. In fact, 30 percent of employees who worked from home said that the limited distractions in their home offices led to more productivity.

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Really, that’s no surprise, since most employees are familiar with cloud-based solutions—like online document editing and conference calling—that make working from home feel natural to people today. In fact, letting employees work from home can also be a boon to employers, who, for instance, can reduce their employee turnover by letting their staff work from home.

Don’t believe us yet? Here are more working from home benefits for employees and employers.

Benefits for Employees

Continuing to Focus on a Pressing Project

One of the problems that arises when working in an office is interference from other workers. Sometimes they want to chat; sometimes they need something immediately reviewed. But these distractions can take away from productivity. If employees work from home, though, they are better able to spend all their time completing the most important projects.

Taking Care of Yourself and Your Life

We often talk about the benefits of a healthy work-life balance, but working from home lets employees achieve this balance. If they want to walk around their neighborhoods in the afternoons, they can. If they need to take care of a sick child, they can be available. Instead of taking week-long vacations to get away from the office, they’re more likely to take long weekends so they don’t come back to a mountain of piled up work. Flexible work-from-home schedules ensure that employees can complete projects on their own time.

Read more on tips to maximise long weekends for 2023 holidays

Benefits for Employers

Hiring the Best Candidates — from Anywhere

If you let your employees work from home, you don’t have to only hire people who live in your area. Instead, you can expand your employee pool across the country to ensure that you find the best people with the most appropriate skill sets. This can be particularly helpful if you want to hire someone with a rare and individualized set of skills who might not live where you company is located.

Limiting Your Office Costs

If your company is completely remote, you can cut office and office supply costs. Overhead to rent an office, especially in prime locations, is expensive, as is buying supplies to stock your office. If you let employees work from home, you can either limit these costs—perhaps you would need a smaller office space—or cut them entirely.

Working from home is a much more feasible option now for employees and employers because of expanding cloud-based computing solutions. While still somewhat unconventional, working from home can improve workplace morale and productivity.