Who would know the best way to obtain efficiency with employees is to offer them as much flexibility as possible? Especially recently, working remotely has become the standard practice across industries. As the pioneers of this trend, technology companies are hiring more remote workers every day, realizing the remote work benefits. The reason for this is that remote work has many favorable effects on employee morale, and thus work efficiency, which tech businesses can benefit from.
“If you’ve got development centers all over the world, you’ve got a sales force out with the customers, the fact that tools like Skype (and) digital collaboration are letting people work better at a distance — that is a wonderful thing.” — @BillGates
Here are 5 reasons why remote work will benefit your software business as well:
#1: Increased Productivity & Job Satisfaction
Your business is worth as much as your employees. Once your employees become more productive, they will come up with better results and bring in more revenue to your software business. The research done by TINYpulse found that an overwhelming 91% of remote workers feel they’re more productive when they’re working remotely. The study also shows that remote working increases job satisfaction promoting employee retention.
One of the main reasons why remote work yields better results than office work is that constant distractions prevent “Deep Work”. Continuous interruptions in open workspaces hamper productivity and make it difficult for teamers to engage in deep work. At the same time, that's not only productivity but also the mental health of workers seems to be affected by interrupted work.
The evidence shows that the employees try to compensate for the interrupted work by trying to work heavier and faster, which leads to heavy mental workload, more stress, and time pressure. Thus, one of the biggest remote work benefits is that it enables people to fully focus on one’s work, work in a less stressful way, and thus produce great results.
#2: Enhanced Talent Pool
The number of talented and skilled workers has rapidly increased. And, it became harder to find and retain them. According to LinkedIn Talent Blog, the technology (software) industry is seeing the most talent turnover as the average tech employee’s tenure at a tech company is only 2.1 years. So, instead of toiling over hiring talented people in a competitive landscape, most tech companies today resort to remote work so that they can take advantage of skilled workers from all over the globe. So, geography no longer poses an obstacle for software companies, restricting them to hire only where their offices are.
Thanks to remote work, we have now the entire world to choose perfect team members from. The talent pool for remote workers is almost endless.
Also, remote work consolidates diversity within your team. You’re more likely to form a more heterogeneous group made up of different kinds of people with a variety of ideas and backgrounds as you have the means to hire remotely. Diverse teams perform better and come up with better ideas. It also improves work culture and helps you attract better talent.
#3: Lower Turnover
Once you set your ideal remote team, the teamers are more likely to stay around for years to come. The research shows that companies that embrace remote working have a 25% lower turnover than companies that do not. Also, the companies supporting remote work are perceived as taking heed of their employee’s needs and more likely to attract skilled workers who worked remotely before and have no interest in returning to traditional 9-to-5 office jobs.
Some of the unique features of remote working useful for retaining employees are as the following:
Flexible. Assuring that the teamers can work wherever and whenever they want.
Productive. Their productivity is assessed by the tasks they accomplish not by the hours they filled in.
Autonomous. Teamers are accountable mostly to themselves.
Transparent. All work towards a goal and know other team members do the same.
#4: Reduced Attrition
According to a Stanford study, remote work helps increase wellness in the workplace besides productivity and job satisfaction. During the 2-year experiment on a Chinese travel agency, it was found that employee attrition decreased by 50 percent among the remote workers, they had fewer sick days and took less time off. That should be mentioned that the company also saved $2k per employee on rent by reducing office space.
People who are working remotely from home enjoy a better work/life balance and lower stress levels. So, they’re less likely to take a day off for minor health issues. According to the study, 75% of remote workers stated that they’d continue to work in case of flu-like conditions, weather-related disasters, and terrorism compared to 28% of traditional office workers. Moreover, companies supporting remote work reported 63% fewer unscheduled absences.
#5: Lower Costs
It’s surely beyond doubt that remote work will cut your expenses. It does so in many ways. First, since you no longer need office space, it will reduce your costs on lease and office equipment. Many tech companies today are replacing their office rental with a virtual office lease to utilize a commercial address along with access to meeting rooms and daily office spaces without a long-term commitment. In addition, one of the remote work benefits is that it reduces the IT expenses since remote workers can use their own devices, manage their projects on software-based productivity tools and intercommunicate via affordable high-tech video conference tools.
Going remote, however, is not only in favor of the employers, but also provides huge benefits for the employees.
It annually costs $10k to $20k to house an employee in a major city. The remote worker, on the other hand, can rent a place anywhere in any state (or even country) according to their budget. And, since employees no longer have to commute, they also save on transportation-related expenses.
According to Inc.;
Remote workers benefit from savings between $2k to $7k each year.
Businesses, on the other hand, saves almost $11k annually per employee.
Remote Work Benefits
It's almost like remote work has become the new normal. This is because of the self-evident remote work benefits, e.g. increased employee morale/wellness and productivity, better employee retention, and lower costs. As more and more software businesses are transitioning to remote work, it's definitely a trend to follow closely for other tech companies to take advantage of the remote work benefits as well.
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