A lot of companies are hemorrhaging money faster than they are making it and that’s because they make the mistake of thinking great work only happens within the confines of a traditional office where bosses can micromanage their employees, overwork them, and keep an eye on them to make sure they aren’t doing other things on the company’s dime.
This post will turn this notion on its head and focus on the cost-effectiveness and a few other benefits of small remote teams instead of in physical offices.
SMALL REMOTE TEAMS GIVE YOU ACCESS TO A LARGER TALENT POOL
For an in-office team, you are limited in the quality of recruitment you make because you can only hire within (or not very far from) the city where your office is located.
If your office is in Chicago, for instance, you are left with very little choice, you can only hire a software developer who lives in the Chicago area or one who’s willing to move. Even if that particular developer is mediocre.
If however, your company is a distributed company that offers potential employees the option to work remotely, then you don’t need to settle only for developers that live within your locality you can widen your search net and seek out the very best person for the job, even if they live on the other side of the world.
REMOTE WORK HELPS CUT DOWN YOUR PAYROLL BUDGET
Aside from the fact that you can hire the best talent by offering them the opportunity to work from Kenya, Dubai, Iceland or just about anywhere in the world, these talents will also be willing to accept a lower pay when offered the chance to work remotely. “How so” you wonder?
Well let’s do the math if a worker opts for an in-office job, they have to commute, if they have to commute, they might need to buy a car, buy gas regularly, purchase a car insurance policy, fork aside some money every 3 months or so for routine maintenance like oil change, etc. That’s assuming everything goes well and there are no unexpected repairs.
After they add up all those costs and realize how deep commuting will potentially eat into their salary, it won’t be difficult for them to accept lower pay in exchange for a chance to work remotely.
Another cost they might consider is time, the average time they spend commuting to and from work might be 2 hours every day, that adds up to 10 hours per week and 520 hours per year!
That’s 520 hours per year just sitting in traffic!
So for these reasons, if a prospect is deciding between working for a company that offers more money but no remote work opportunities and your company that offers less pay but remote work opportunities, the prospect will most likely choose you.
So it’s a win-win for both of you, your company gets to save extra money that would have gone into the payroll budget and in the same vein, the worker gets to save the extra money and time that would have gone into commuting.
REMOTE WORK REDUCES DISEASES ESPECIALLY INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Nick walks in with a cough on Monday morning and has to leave before lunchtime because the cough was getting worse. Little did he know that during those 2 hours he spent in the office, he’d already infected Mike and Susan and 2 days later, they had to call in sick.
It’s a given that workers who work in offices are more susceptible to contracting a disease at their workplace than their counterparts who work from home.
According to research published in a Scandinavian journal, the higher the number of people who work in an office the more sick leaves the employees will have to take, the study also states that people who worked in open-offices had 62% more days of sickness absence than those who didn’t.
The most unfortunate side is sometimes these workers bring these diseases back home and infect their unsuspecting families with it.
So here’s the bad news — sick workers equate to more sick leaves which means a decrease in productivity and ultimately a dip in the company’s bottom line.
REMOTE WORK CUTS DOWN YOUR OVERHEAD COSTS DRASTICALLY
With remote work, you don’t have to worry about renting an office space, buying office furniture and supplies, or paying for utilities. You also don’t have to worry about getting someone to fix a leaking faucet, a broken heater or an AC.
All of these costs walk away from you the day you decide to jump on the remote work bandwagon.
And there are real-life examples, according to Forbes, the insurance giant Aetna in a bid to boost its bottom line, shed 2.7 million square feet of office space and saved $78 million in one year.
The financial services company, Amex, also had similar results. They reported saving $10-15 million annually due to delegating some of their operations to remote workers.
SMALL REMOTE TEAMS HELP REDUCE EMPLOYEE TURNOVER
According to survey data from Owl labs companies that allow remote work, experience 25% less employee turnover than companies that do not allow remote work.
It’s clear that companies that prohibit small remote teams are doing themselves a great disservice, because a lot of employees will only accept the position reluctantly and will be willing to jump ship to another company that offers remote work options as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
And who can blame them, some of them might just be looking for a better work-life balance, while some others might be parents who have childcare responsibilities and feel that a remote job will provide them with the flexibility to be a committed parent and at the same time a productive worker.
BONUS
Working remotely would require you to jump on video conference calls from time to time to brief your boss and keep your team up to date.
With Krisp you can get rid of the awkward “uhms”, “excuse me?” or “can you repeat that?” By filtering out background noise from your end as well as your callers’ end (no matter how many callers are on the conference).
