10 Ways Companies Benefit by Enabling Employees to Smart Work

Smart Working – the employee flexibility to work from home, remote, hub or hybrid with the use of technology. You must be familiar with this term by now. The reason everyone is raving about it is not only for the benefits it brings employees but also the ones it provides companies, too.

Smart working is used mostly from large companies, but this new way of organizing work is increasingly visible in smaller ones, too. According to this survey, the main advantage for employees to not work traditional 9-5 hours is because it allows them to establish a better work-life balance (77.8%). This benefits the employees, we know, BUT 40% of the respondents in the survey stated that they saw smart working as an opportunity to optimize how they use their time and increase their company’s productivity. This shows that the company benefits too when they allow employees to work smart.

Here are some other reasons why:

1. Fewer Expenses

Not only is it an effective recruiting and retention tool (on which we’ll talk more about later), but smart working can save employers money in a multitude of ways. First off, if you let employees work from home only, you won’t have to spend a dime on office supplies. It will help the company reduce your overhead expenditures. Office equipment, furniture… no need. In some instances, you may not even have to pay for employees’ phone lines or home computers that they use for completing their work and staying in contact.

Moreover, you’ll save on power bills and office snacks and break-room coffee. IBM, for one, noted that it had reduced its office space by 78 million square feet and saved about $100 million annually as a result when they decided to let their employees work from home (only to revoke it afterward).

2. Greater Employee Loyalty

Allowing employees to work flexible schedules will surely increase job satisfaction. This will help your company greatly because you’ll cultivate a devoted, long-term staff that has an increasing degree of knowledge about your business. Employees that are given flexible work options are also more often on higher spirits and enjoy their job responsibilities more than those in a traditional office environment.

3. Reduced Turnover

72% of professionals prefer the benefit of telecommuting over any other. ‘Employees want to be offered geographic flexibility, less rigid work hours, a shorter commute and the ability to create a work-life harmony.’ When companies understand their requirements and provide them, why wouldn’t they quit after all?

Employees leaving a workforce and having to be replaced costs. When retention rates are high and not many are quitting, that means less time and money is spent on advertising for open positions, then interviewing and hiring new staffers and finally bringing them to be accustomed to job responsibilities.

4. Distance is Not an Issue When Hiring

Being located in one place only means you can only get employees in that city or near enough to commute to that city. It doesn’t offer the ability to work with anyone in the world as smart work does. Freelance networks like Toptal do this by connecting top companies with the very best software developers from all around the world. The perfect way to attract talented employees, isn’t it?

5. You Can Still Stay Connected

Thanks to the Internet, employees and employers can stay connected every minute of every day. We’re in the 21st century, after all, the digital age. One can find access to wifi almost anywhere, and tools like GoToMeeting and Skype make remote communication a breeze. Plus, we do good while doing our job remotely.

6. Environmental Impact

You might not know, but you have an impact on a more sustainable world by allowing smart work in your company. By working from home, the number of cars on the road is decreased, saving gas and reducing auto emissions. There are many ways for employees who work from home to communicate with colleagues and managers; there’s email, phones, and video conferences. Having virtual meetings and communicating electronically helps protect the environment greatly. Moreover, ‘it can allow you to position your business as a good corporate steward.’

7. Good Reputation

Yahoo got a whole lot of reputation when they stopped their working-from-home program, but wasn’t any good. Being an environmentally-friendly AND family-friendly company, you can easily get some PR out of it. Your company will be sought after valuable employees and it will have a good reputation overall.

8. Earn Government Incentives

The latter two benefits smart work provides a company, can lead to a third one: government incentives. In the U.S., state and local governments are offering monetary incentives to companies that are able to help reduce the environmental impact of commuting, as Time reports. While this might not be the case for Europe, it’s still good to know there are such initiatives.

9. Less Sick Days

Neither one of us likes it, but there has been a morning we found ourselves coming to the office coughing and sneezing. Flues are common, and coming to the office in that condition means spreading germs all over and sharing the illness. As a result, you have multiple employees taking sick days. But, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. It’s nice for employees who are mildly sick to know they have the possibility to choose whether they want to sit one out, or get work done. After all, it’s not like they have to leave their homes.

10. Increased Productivity

A Stanford study found that ones who work from home are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts. That can be because they have face fewer interruptions which makes it possible to focus on their work and make more calls by themselves, making them more autonomous. Moreover, they don’t have the stress of traffic or arriving on time at the office. All these benefits have a positive impact on the quality of work and productivity, which benefits the company in terms of earnings.

Now that you know all the benefits smart work provides you and your employees, what are you waiting for to make the call?

Guest Blogger Bio:

Dafina Zymeri is passionate about reading, writing, and self-development.

She aims to make a difference with her writing and does it by intertwining her passions into helping mothers return to the workforce.

Dafina writes for mother-works.com, which is a job portal designed to bring together stay at home moms and recruiters.

Photo credit: https://samplius.com/