Despite being well proven and effective, telecommuting is still a tough-sell to managers who have spent many years mananaging a traditional workforce. It can sometimes take many successes managing telecommuters before even some of the more progressive managers come to fully embrace this new work paradigm. To help everyone understand the wonderful benefits of telecommuting to the employee, employeer, and our planet, we have composed a list of the more significant ones. If you are not yet a telecommuter, but are a member of a virtual team, you may want to check out our virtual team benefits page.
The Employee
- Reduced commute time—You can spend less time commuting and more time with your families and friends, or just relaxing after a tough day.
- Work-life balance—You can attend that early-morning or late-night teleconference without having to get up extra early to commute to work or stay late at the office. You can also work outside the normal work hours if a creative urge strikes you.
- Health—Not being exposed to those nasty flu and cold germs going around the office means you spend fewer days out sick or, better yet, you have more days available for vacation (if your company has a flexible work option).
The Employer
- The Best talent—Teams can more easily be rapidly assembled from the best available talent, regardless of where they reside.
- Faster time-to-market—Since team members can work from anywhere, they don’t have to travel to meetings, thus saving valuable project time. Having a team that can instantly respond to questions because they are more often at their desks rather than sitting in a car or on a plane, gets products to market faster.
- Lower infrastructure cost—If your team has full-time teleworkers, you don’t have to pay the per-square-foot office costs for an onsite cubicle.
- Reduced absenteeism—The larger the number of telecommuters in your project team, the lower are the chances for disease to spread from person to person within the team. This translates to higher productivity and lower healthcare costs.
- More resilient workforce—A distributed workforce means a reduced chance that your entire office would be offline in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist act.
The Planet
- Lower impact on the environment—For every team member who doesn’t have to travel to be physically on-site for meetings and daily work, there is a savings in gas, which in most cases means
lower carbon emissions, fewer traffic jams, and less road rage. - More effective use of space—Office building space can be smaller for a given employee population, thus saving square footage and utility costs.
