15 reasons to work remotely

A few days ago, one of my friends called me up on Thursday around noon. During the talk, she got struck by the fact I work from home. More precisely, how I have the freedom to work from home. ‘Lucky you’, she said. And I feel lucky. One of many benefits of working for Awingu is the fact we get encouraged to work remotely. Our solution is based on one important concept: work anywhere from any device. Practice what you preach, right? That’s why all Awingurus work both remotely, on the road or at home or in the office.

However, there are still a lot of companies that have strict rules that demand to work in the office and using the company (managed and owned) devices. As much as the demand for flexibility is getting higher, companies and IT departments still face challenges to make the right transition to give employees the possibility to work ‘remotely’.

A lot of the challenges are technical by nature. Every one of these technical challenges can be solved with Awingu. Your company runs on legacy applications? No worries, we enable you to access your legacy applications from any device. You have a lot of security doubts when it comes to the fact your workers work from their personal device? We provide a highly secure access using the latest Web technology like Multi-Factor Authentication and usage auditing. You don’t provide mobile devices such as laptops or tablets? Awingu enables a highly secure access to company applications and documents on any device, also the devices owned by your employees (Bring Your Own Device, BYOD). Check out more about how Awingu can help in our guide “Why you should consider working remotely?”.

As much as we advocate remote working, many studies have proven remote working is a good thing for business. It drives employee satisfaction, cost optimizations and increases value. Below we give you an overview of some interesting facts about mobile working (source https://anywhereworkday.com/25-interesting-updated-stats-on-telework-telecommuting-remote-work/).

Here we go!

15 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT WORKING REMOTELY

1. About 24% of employed people surveyed do work from home on an average day. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, US Dept. of Labor, American Time Use Survey Report June 2016, survey conducted 2015)

2. More than three-fourths of managers and staff surveyed around the world at organizations with workplace flexibility practices said they increase employee engagement and satisfaction, and more than two-thirds said they increase employee motivation (World at Work Trends in Workplace Flexibility, (updated), 2015)

3. Productivity increased 22% when workers were allowed to choose their optimal place to work (Bloom et al. in The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Nov. 20, 2014, and referenced in Work-Life Balance and the Economics of Workplace Flexibility, Council of Economic Advisers, June 2014)

4. Other studies show productivity increases between 15 to about 50%. In the US, for instance, that could mean a gain of $334 billion or more a year in national productivity. (Global Workplace Analytics analysis and stats as of Sept. 2015)

5. 1 in 3 workers say they have passed up a job because it conflicted with family obligations (Nielsen/Harris Poll of 4,096 US adults, May 27-30, 2014)

6. 56% of working parents say it’s difficult to balance their work and family. (Raising Kids and Running a Household report, Pew Research Center (updated), 2015)

7. 8 in 10 employees consider teleworking a job perk (Global Workplace Analytics analysis and stats as of Sept. 2015)

8. Nearly 75% of teleworkers reported better work-life balance & 69% reported a less stressed day (US-Canada Telecommuting Survey, Staples, June 2014)

9. Holding all else equal, commuters have lower life satisfaction, a lower sense that their daily activities are worthwhile, lower levels of happiness and higher anxiety on average than non-commuter. The worst effects of commuting on personal well-being were associated with journey times lasting between 61 and 90 minutes. (Office for National Statistics, UK, Commuting and Personal Well-Being, Feb. 2014)

10. 54% of employers expect flexible working benefits to increase in importance for employee retention (2014 Strategic Benefits Survey, Society for Human Resources Management)

11. 60% of teleworkers around the world pointed out they prefer full-time over part-time telework. As for the setting, 62% usually work at home, 38% work in other spaces, like coffee shops, local shared workspaces, or at airports and accommodations (Global Telework Survey, PGi, June 2015)

12. Dell has saved $21 million in real estate expenses and since 2014 reduced 9,800 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions from energy savings – the equivalent emissions of 49 car trips to the moon and back – by letting employees work remotely. (Dell corporation 2020 Legacy of Good update, FY2015)

13. PwC, a business services firm with operations around the world, is aiming for more flexible workspace, such as co-working spaces at its offices, as well as teleworking – toward as much as $850 million in cost savings and greater work-life flexibility for all employees (Bloomberg news, “How Satisfying Millennials Could Save PwC $850 Million,” Mar. 23, 2016)

14. Even organizations like Aetna and Humana where many employees have worked remotely and WordPress/Automattic, where everyone works remotely (100% distributed) can develop company culture. (Automattic; Berkun, How WordPress Thrives with a 100% Remote Workforce, Harvard Business Review, March 15, 2013; and session, How to Build Culture in a Distributed Company, South by Southwest, 2014)

15. And then there’s the traffic: $160 billion in time & fuel is used up in traffic congestion just on US roads alone. That’s more wasted fuel than it’d take to fill the New Orleans Superdome arena 3x and about 2 weeks’ worth of work (42 hours) in traffic yearly per commuter. (Texas A&M Transportation Institute, 2015 Urban Mobility Scorecard)

Source: https://anywhereworkday.com/25-interesting-updated-stats-on-telework-telecommuting-remote-work/