No Cost Key to Recruiting Success?

Is your company looking to increase productivity, enhance your employee’s loyalty and boost your company’s appeal to potential employees? Is it possible to to achieve all this at no additional cost to your company? Could you actually save money while achieving these kind of gains?
There is one employee perk that can benefit both the company and the employee.  Telecommuting is becoming hugely popular with employees and companies. Since 2005 telecommuting grew almost 80%.
Obviously as with every other aspect of your business, good management is essential. Not every job can be performed by a telecommuter. Not every employee is a suitable candidate for telecommuting either. Tasks and projects performed by telecommuters need to be monitored and evaluated just like all others.
Computer security is another area that deserves careful thought. Make sure employees are trained on security and data backup best practices.
However, the benefits to companies capitalizing on a telecommuting workforce are compelling.
An employee working from home frees up work space and equipment for others to use. An employee freed from the considerable pressures of time wasted on the freeway and traffic stresses is inclined to be more generous in working a little extra to get a job completed. In fact one of the problems some telecommuters experience is working too much. When the office is in the home, it’s much easier to jump on the computer and pound out that idea that came in the middle of the night.
While not every telecommuter will be that diligent, it’s important for employers to be aware of the tendency on the part of employees, as well as an employer’s temptation to raise expectations of telecommuters beyond reasonable limits.
Nonetheless, to get a sense of how much of their lives commuters devote to the freeway, consider someone with a modest commute of 30 minutes one way will spend 240 hours a year on the road. Ten full days a year of life wasted sitting in traffic. Setting aside stress, just putting that time to productive use is a win for both employer and employee.
As telecommuting becomes more popular, more job candidates will come to interviews looking for it among the conventional pay and benefit packages. Office supply retailer Staples’ third annual telecommuting survey revealed 71% of current telecommuters say the option to work from home is an important benefit when considering a new job. Obviously the management risk of offering the option is reduced by hiring people who have demonstrated success working from home.
Of all the great breakthroughs in technology perhaps the greatest is delivering the possibility of working from home to millions of  people. When you consider the benefits to the personal lives and health of employees, and the reduction of pressure on the environment along with very real financial benefits to companies, if you haven’t already done so, it’s time to embrace the way technology is changing the way we live and work.
Articles supporting this piece are here, here and here.

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