How Recruitment Software Helps You Connect with Remote Employees

By Guest Author, Tamara Gravelle:

Why You Should Let Your Employees Work From Home

Working from home is becoming more popular among employees, but some companies are still reluctant to embrace telecommuting. In 2017, 3.7 million employees in the United States worked from home for at least half of the work week, which seems like a lot but actually only makes up just under 3% of the workforce in the U.S.

With more employees asking for the opportunity to work from home full or part-time, should employers start providing more telecommuting options? Of course, for certain jobs, it’s not possible to work remotely, but industries such as finance, insurance, and real estate have embraced the change from working in an office setting to working remotely.

5 Benefits to Telecommuting

In some cases, the reason why an organization won’t allow remote work opportunities is because the benefits of doing so aren’t widely known. Below you’ll see reasons why working from home can be a positive experience for both the employee and the employer.

1. Employer and employee both save money

It’s easy to see how employees save money by working from home. They don’t need to commute, saving money on gas, transportation passes, or parking. There are also occasional costs like buying lunch because they forgot theirs at home they can eliminate. On the flip side, employers save money because they don’t need to provide a workspace for remote employees. They can let part-time telecommuters come in on different days and share a desk, or if the majority of the workforce works from home, they can downsize their office space, saving money on rentals and supplies.

2. Employees become more productive

From unnecessary meetings to office gossip, to telephones constantly ringing, there are lots of moments where employees could be more productive if these common office distractions are reduced. By working from home, your employees can set up the perfect environment for them to work, blocking out all distractions and being as productive as possible.

3. Reduce turnover rates

Sometimes allowing unhappy employees to work from home can mean keeping them employed. If a person is in a negative environment or feels like they can’t work at their full potential in their current setting, they’re more likely to look for other employment options. By allowing your employees to work from home if that would be a better environment for them, you’ll reduce turnover and won’t have to recruit as often.

4. Attract new employees

As the benefits of telecommuting become well-known, more job hunters are going to be looking for jobs which offer that work opportunity. By adding that a remote work option is available to job postings, you’ll attract candidates who may not have applied otherwise, creating a larger and stronger candidate pool.

5. Become a more modern workforce

With more companies catching on to this trend, it’s likely to become more popular rather than fade away. By being one of the early adopters of telecommuting, you’ll allow your workforce to become more modern and become a trendsetter rather than a follower.

How to Keep Remote Employees Engaged with the Company

Now that you can see some of the reasons why telecommuting is beneficial, you may have some concerns about how to communicate with these employees or how engaged they are with your organization. Communication shouldn’t be a problem, though. If you need to get in contact with your remote workers immediately, email, text messaging, phone calls, and instant messaging systems are all reliable options for reaching out to employees working from home.

Engagement may seem like a harder issue to tackle, but that doesn’t have to be true. Other than the usual HR engagements such as company newsletters and events, you also don’t have to turn every meeting with these remote employees into a phone call anymore. Video technology has advanced enough so you can move all your meetings online and keep the personal connection between your employees and the head office.

By Guest Author, Tamara Gravelle

Tamara Gravelle is a Senior Content Writer and Competitive Research Analyst at VidCruiter. She specializes in writing about video interviewing software, HR technology, and the greater human resources industry. She tweets at @VidCruiter

Guest Contributor