Fresh and Forward Thinking: Considering the Future of Telecommuting

Mobile Office

Starting a new business? Needing a few people to employ? Planning for that would mean a huge logistics problem.  You would need to find a suitable place to set up shop, get people from the surrounding area and even offer some relocation packages for people who live in a different state. All this and more you will have to consider just to get your business started, unless you institute a telecommuting program.

Telecommuting is not practiced nearly enough because  it is a new system that is nowhere near the traditional one that we have.  Currently, we look at attendance as one of the main drivers that keep our businesses productive, so we need people to go to the office and look smart when they do. With the technology of today though, one would realize that most of the things that people do in the office, they can do at home. Think of the benefits that one could have from this set up. Here are a few:

  1. Savings – rent for office space takes a huge chunk out of a businesses’ budget. Some people opt to put up their own buildings to negate this expense, but that project would still take a huge amount of cash, and the return on Investment would take years. With telecommuting, a business can let go of the office altogether, or keep a smaller office that will be used by your workforce in a shared work environment  Folks will come in once or twice a week instead of a full five days. Also, you buy fewer computers (not a “one employee is to one desk” plan) and invest more on lockers for your folks as this is where they would keep the files they need only in the office.
  2. Productivity – the one advantage of telecommuting is the productive stance that you take: you can dictate how people can be considered productive. Since attendance is out of the question, then you can go on to things such as how many reports have been filed or how many calls have been taken, etc. This would let your employees focus more on how much work they have to do instead of how many hours they need to be clocked in to the office.
  3. Morale – Oftentimes, in a traditional business setting, the morale of the office is tied in with their attendance and the number of leaves they can take in a month or so. Declined leaves are a huge contributor to the low morale of employees, as these are often requested due to important personal reasons. The decline gives people a sense that their personal lives are not valued by the company they work for. If a telecommuting approach is taken, these can be minimized because the employee creates his or her own schedule, and the items can be delivered even before deadlines while attending to family needs as well.

Setting up a telecommuting based business is not that hard, as the technology is now readily available to everyone, even on a personal level. Unlike decades back, when the requirement would have been a phone line for voice as well as for fax, all that you need is a high-speed internet connection, which I am willing to bet you are on right now.  Phone bills are not even a concern, even for long distance, due to the presence of the Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), which allows someone with an internet connection to call another person with the same type of connection for no extra cost.

Technology has come far in the past few years, and this would allow us to divert whatever we do to more non-traditional approaches. All we need to do is look forward and determine what would work

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