The Rise of Telecommuting

With offices around the globe shutting down amid lock down orders the workforce has turned to Zoom to continue working. Now telecommuting was slowly becoming a thing in some industries. Think tech companies. However, now that companies have no choice but to adapt to this new way of working they are clearly seeing the slew of benefits that are coming with it. Even when things return to a sense of normalcy I think we are about to see a radical shift in the work life due to the fact that the fear of the virus will linger far after it is gone.

Even when people start returning back to work, social distancing measures will have to be put into place. On top of this temperatures will have to be checked before entering into offices. It is difficult enough to get up and go to work in the first place and then to remember to adhere to all of these other strict rules will cause chaos. Thus telecommuting can be the key to alleviate all of this.

Consider these things. Employees are now able to get extra sleep in the morning because their commute has become virtually non-existent. Which in turn gives a productivity boost. Due to telecommuting employees are able to gain roughly 1.5 hours of their time back from not having to commute. This will result to higher performance at work in the long run.

Another added benefit of telecommuting is that employees will feel a sense of being in charge which is very important in today’s world. A flexible schedule. You got it. A boss that is not breathing down your back. You got that as well. With a flexible work schedule comes another very important factor. Childcare. Oh the joy. With telecommuting, newly minted parents are able to take care of there young ones without the obnoxiously increasing costs of childcare. Which in turn means a huge savings to parents wallets. All of this is good news, and I haven’t even addressed the good stuff yet.

Telecommuting will also bring a wide variety of benefits to companies as well. For one, the need of office spaces will be a whole lot less. Of course on occasions companies will still need to hold in person meetings, but if 90% of a companies workforce is at home the need to pay for such expensive office space will be eradicated.

Companies will be able to save tens of thousands of dollars per month on rent and put that money to other good use. On top of this flying out people for business meetings will be drastically reduced. Zoom has proven that we can get what we need done in a meeting via video conferencing, thus saving firms major dollars on flights, hotels, and other expenses that employees may rack up during a business trip. There are so many cost saving measures to businesses through telecommuting that I believe will slowly trickle down into worker pockets.

Telecommuting will have an enormous impact on our environment as well. As more and more people adopt to this way of work it will inevitably lead to less cars on the road everyday, which means less carbon emissions are being emitted into the atmosphere. With global warming increasingly becoming a major concern of our planets overall well being this will have a massive impact in moving in the direction of a cleaner more sustainable future. Since everything is done via cloud computing nowadays the usage of paper is on a downward trajectory. This is an important benefit as the use of paper is continuously filling up our landfills, and in turn emitting more greenhouse gases. Thus eliminating this from our everyday lives will have a profound impact on the Earth’s environment for years to come. These are just some of the benefits that telecommuting provides to us.

Now with every good thing that happens there are a couple of downfalls.

For one, telecommuting means more isolationism. Because you are not interacting face-to-face everyday it can get daunting. You see human nature is such that we crave for social interaction, without it, it has a profound effect on our mental well being. Just look at what is happening to us amid lock down. Human interaction is something that we take for granted, and now isolation is not having a pleasant affect on us.

Now there are certain things that companies can implement so that we can combat this issue. Having mandatory video conferencing calls is something we can do to continue the “face-to-face” interaction. This is good, but it too has its own downfalls. This includes voices going in and out, lag with internet connection, and having a learning curve in general about how these things work. The other issue with video conferencing is explaining how to solve an issue. An issue that should take no longer than five minute to solve in-person could wind up taking much longer due to the fact that you now have to walk someone through the steps of what to do, and this can be frustrating. To be honest these are minor nuisances, and for the most part video conferencing works just fine.

Despite the small downsides that come with telecommuting I believe that it will become the future of work, especially after these uncertain times pass. We were already starting to head in that direction and COVID 19 has unintentionally sped up the process.