What is the Future of Work From Home
The number of people doing home-based work has increased in this decade. To understand the future of home-based work, you need to know about how often companies seek home-based workers. This article will throw light upon the following questions: What are the current trends of online or offline work from home? What are the large entrepreneurs planning for the freelancing? What do the recent researches say about the home-based work? What are the merits and demerits of telecommuting?
What are the Attractions of Telecommuting?
Attractions of telecommuting vary for entrepreneurs and employees. Let us have a look upon:
For entrepreneurs:
Companies have to bear less cost on building their offices and equipping the office-based work with all essential facilities. A survey (2012) conducted in 19 countries by Citrix System revealed many benefits of telecommuting for the entrepreneurs like:
The findings of the survey reported that 24 % of the companies are promoting telecommuting by opening a few offices only.
When there will be fewer employees working in offices, entrepreneurs will have to utilize fewer expenses and devices in the office.
For Freelancers:
A study at Owl Labs (2017) revealed the following features that favor the employees to work at home:
- There are possibly fewer distractions like no workplace stress in the home-based work.
- People have reduced or no commutes. They do not have to travel for their work saving time and money both.
- People can better manage their children and other necessary home responsibilities along with telecommuting.
What are the future indicators of telecommuting?
Frequent researches in the field of telecommuting are indicating the vital role of home-based work in professional life. Experts consider the countries in the West like the US, UK, and Singapore as telecommuting friendly states. A study by the US workforce in 2017 found that 2.9 % of people out of 3.9 Million employees in the US worked from home part-time or full-time from 2015 to 2016. The same trend observed in the reports of the US Bureau of labor statistics. Estimations say that 43 % of the total US Employees will work as telecommuters by the year 2020.
Germany and Japan are the countries where office-based work matters instead of home-based work. After the Fukushima disaster in Japan, organizations seriously start thinking about home-based work. Fukushima nuclear reactor faced a nuclear accident by the earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. Corporate Marketing expert Kim DeCarlis stated that after the nuclear accident these states start believing that people can work from anywhere that monetized the role of home-based work.
Why the home-based work is gaining momentum rapidly?
There are various reasons why large industries and companies are frequently hiring freelancers who work from home.
Creative and Productive Work
Telecommuting arrangements differ in various scenarios. Employees may work remotely part-time or full time.in some remote conditions, employees have to report and get online in fixed hours to the organization. In other cases, they have to send work in fix hours. Whatever the arrangement employees follow, there is a positive impact observed.
A study reported by Canada Life, in 2017, found higher productivity levels among the home-based employees as compared to the office commutes. The productivity level of telecommuters was ranked 7.7 out of 10 while office-based employees showed a ranking of 6.5 only. The study further described the reasons for creativity among the home-based employees that are as under:
Home-based jobs give a flexible lifestyle to a person that reduces the various family, friends, and home-based stressors. Consequently, employees work better by showing creativity and passion.
Telecommuters do not face the traveling stressors and are free of time boundaries and in time strict reporting issues that relax the employee and increase productivity.
Hunt the talent irrespective of location and time zone
Another important factor that has geared up the freelancing is that you can hire people from any part of the country. You have not to pay for the traveling or residence of the employee.
It is very hard to hunt professional talent when your budget is limited or when you are working on a smaller scale but telecommuting has made it easy. You can pay to professionals according to the projects you assign to them. Just imagine when your company needs a few articles to write for its website and you have to hire a full-time writer. It will cost you high instead of your contract with a freelancer and pays just for part-time work.
Many other factors are motivating the telecommuting. Like increasing inflation in the real estate sector has made it difficult for the people to open offices in multiple locations of the estate. In this context, people can invest wisely by opening a few offices of the organization and hiring telecommuters for the work.
Challenging gateways to the telecommuting
Business investors and freelancers both face issues while doing home-based work. As a freelancer, you can get unreliable clients who are not bound to the commitments. Late payments and payment scams are the most common challenges. People try to search out the cheapest option in freelancing that increases the frustrations and issues on the part of the freelancer.
On the other side, companies consider that in working from home an employee may lose integration and creativity due to lesser training resources available. It is the reason Companies like Yahoo and IBM who had permitted their workers to work remotely from home has reversed the policies now. They have called back all employees to do office-based work due to many demerits of the home-based work. Yet the trend has gone upward and showing the upcoming years will make the day for telecommuting. Additionally, all types of work cannot be operated from home. There are some tasks that can only be done in office environment.
The concluding point is that telecommuting is a new profession globally. It emerged sharply but the challenges it possesses need some strategic planning by the organization to resolve and ease the people.
