Imagine yourself working at home. If you imagine someone in their pajamas, eating cereal at 12 noon, and skipping bathing for days—well, you are not alone. Many people think that working from home is lazing from home. It is not. Contrary to what many would think about homebased workers, there is actually a lot of creativity and activity that is happening, particularly by a person making it big from home.
There are more homeworking than idling the whole day binging on Facebook. Experts suggest that people work better in an environment that they are comfortable in. The good effect of working from home has actually pushed many employers to allow their workers to stay at home. In fact, the shift to telecommuting has tripled in the last 30 years. In developing countries where traffic issues are prevalent, the amount of people working remotely has increased to 20 percent.
A test supervised by an economics professor by the name of Nicholas Bloom suggest that companies could in fact save a lot if they decide to let their workers work from home. In the study, 500 employees were put to a test. One group were asked to work at home four days a week while another group had to remain in the office.
The big question was, were employees who were asked to work from home were able to resist the three main idler: bed, fridge, and TV. Most managers fear that working from home would only encourage someone to sleep or eat the whole day, thus limiting productivity. After 9 months of the experiment, Bloom was stunned to see that those who worked remotely were far from goofing off. In fact, they were able to increase productivity by as much as 13.5 percent as compared to those who had to report to the office. Best of all, Bloom also found out that the company was able to save up about $1900 per employee during the course of the experiment.
As for the employees, those working from home also showed higher job satisfaction. This study only proves that companies do not really have anything to lose if they decide to let their workers work from home. In fact, doing so will only provide greater benefits to the company. Thus, working from home should be considered as a contingency plan during those summer months where parents could benefit from staying at home with their kids, or during severe weather condition, or it could be given in lieu of a bonus or a raise. After all, when productivity fails, then companies can always opt to bring back their employees inside an office space.
For more information regarding this test, you can visit the actual article here.
