We can often hear “work-life” balance in motivational posters around the office or it might be mentioned on one of the lifestyle pep talks HR offers but does it remain less in practice, or worse, stay in theory?
Weekends are most looked forward to but from experience it’s not the free time per se we desire. What we look for is essentially the freedom from the constraints of work. Before anything else, yes, we love our work but there are times when we just want hit ourselves on the head for missing a family gathering or skipping out on our children’s first school play. This is where the concept of telecommuting comes.
At this day and age, I’d like to think we are enlightened workers, knowing how to utilize the tools made available for us to our own advantage. Technology and the internet have allowed us to have an alternative work-site where our work comes to us and not the other way around. We are not bounded by physical restraints of the location.
Telecommuting is described as a work arrangement which employees enjoy flexibility in work location and hours. The most common term for telecommute is “work from home” but since it’s operating virtually, we can now absolutely work from anywhere in the world be it home, a coffee shop, or even your vacation house in Rio.
Telecommute has plenty of mention-worthy benefits such as increased job satisfaction, reduced stress from commute time and finances, work interruption, and reduced job related costs. However, one benefit that we like to associate with telecommute is having the quintessence of freedom—freedom to choose when to work, where to work, and who to work with.
The statistics are right on chart as well. According to a CIO Insight report conducted in 2010, U.S. businesses can save an estimated amount of $400 billion due to virtual work policies; $124 billion can be saved from reduced office costs; $31 billion saved through reduced employee turnover annually; and employees will save two weeks of free time by not commuting to an office.
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