8 Reasons that Telecommuting is the Best Way to Work These Days

Since Covid, a lot of employers have embraced the idea of having a telecommuting workforce. For one thing, not having to pay overhead for a dedicated office space is a huge savings that many companies find too hard to pass up. For another thing, hiring managers have a much wider pool of potential candidates because workers can come from anywhere in the world. But it is more than that. Many company heads are finding that their workforce is a lot more productive when workers telecommute than when they commute to the office. A more productive workforce will obviously mean good things for the company’s bottom line. One reason that employees are more productive is because it appears that people are just happier working from home than having to commute to work at an office. For bosses on the other hand, it is a lot easier to gauge if an employee is really needed, and if the employer is producing quality work product vs just goofing off all day and getting paid to do it.

It turns out that one of the main reasons that people enjoy telecommuting is because there is less office backstabbing and fewer conflicts than when they go to the office. And it makes sense because when you work at home, nobody is there to see how often you take a cigarette break, how long you take to have lunch, or what new outfit you are wearing. Because of this, and other reasons, there are fewer opportunities for resentments to build up among individuals and groups and therefore fewer conflicts that develop. Telecommuting also reduces the cliques that can form in workplaces, and the distracting gossiping and other related vices, and puts the emphasis on the work.

Telecommuting is more cost-saving than commuting to the office every day. This is obvious. If you work from your kitchen table, you don’t have to buy metro tickets, subway tokens, gas or new tires. This cost saving allows you to use that money for something else, such as maybe extra fruits or vegetables, or fancier beauty items that you could not afford when you had to spend the money to commute to the office. People are known to even use the money for bigger expenditures, such as traveling to foreign countries (after saving up for a little while) or buying new equipment and furniture that would otherwise take a much longer time to acquire.

The reduced travel costs also have another stealth benefit that naturally goes with it: reduced fatigue. If you are commuting less, it naturally means that you are going to have less travel fatigue. After all, what is more exhausting than commuting by metro or train every single morning at 8 a.m. on a crowded rush hour train or getting stuck in rush hour traffic?

Telecommuting is good for the proverbial work/life balance. Working from home allows us to have better work/life balance, sort of like those French people who have always seemed to have had a handle on balancing life and work. As Americans, we are conditioned to work, work, work. It is a part of our national bragging rights to say we stayed up all night to work, or that we stayed at the office till 11:00 a.m. the next day. That is, we literally slept at the office. No self-respecting French person would ever brag about sleeping at the office.

The problem with spending a disproportionate amount of time at the office is that it has a negative impact on family life. It is impossible to nurture a family if most of your waking hours are spent at the office. So, one of the things that people really appreciate about telecommuting is the fact that they can see the kids off to school, or hug the baby at midday, or actually make dinner for the family while they are sitting at the kitchen table “working.”

elecommuting allows people to be more flexible with their time and so they can plan their days in totally different ways, and this can be life-changing because in the same amount of time, they can accomplish many more things. It is possible, for example, to squeeze in a half hour of yoga on the living room floor and this can be good for their fitness and health. It is possible to multi-task so that while they are working on the computer they can be getting their hair braided or over-see repairs in the house. They can also keep an eye on their teenagers to make sure they are not getting into any mischief while mommy and daddy are away at work. They could even be nurturing a side hustle to bring in some extra cash while they are simultaneously “on the clock.” They can keep a watchful eye on aging parents. What this boils down to is a fuller, richer life with more to show at the end, and more satisfaction, versus just having a haggard face from all that commuting, and more regrets that you missed so many milestones while you were busy commuting to the office.

For many people, one of the best things about telecommuting is the flexibility it gives workers to be anywhere at all when they produce their work product for the boss. They could be at a coffee shop, on an airplane, or on the beach in Thailand. The boss does not even have to know where they are; nor do they typically care to let the boss know where they are. So long as they produce the work they are paid to produce, it is nobody’s business, certainly not the boss’s where they are while working.

Workers with disabilities, perhaps more than the average worker, appreciate this new move to telecommuting because it gives them a lot more options and opportunities when they do not have to worry about finding companies that have the appropriate facilities to accommodate their disabilities. This is great because it potentially reduces frustration that comes from being someone with reduced mobility who must compete with able-bodied colleagues for positions. Telecommuting levels the playing field for workers with disabilities in a way that one can only appreciate if one is in this situation.

Telecommuting means that workers can wear their robes to work and go without make up and nobody will be the wiser. For women in particular, this can be a very huge savings because women are forced to spend infinitely more than men on looking “good” at work. Women are forced to spend more on clothing, shoes and handbags because they are judged more based on their appearance than men. They must also spend a lot more on hair and make up and these things can be incredibly expensive for women who need constant cutting, dyeing and plucking to look good at the office. Women also have to buy and wear a lot of pricey underwear to keep everything looking firm, lifted and smooth. Telecommuting changes all of that. It levels the playing field for both genders because like their male counterparts, women can show up to work without worrying about how they look. They can go bra-less. They don’t have to hold in their stomachs all day. It is incredibly freeing and allows them to just focus on working. This leads to higher levels of productivity—which is highly appreciated by the boss.

Two unexpected perks of telecommuting are that telecommuting helps workers to be more creative; and it helps workers to solve more problems on their own. This makes for higher levels of productivity for the average worker. The reason people are more creative when they work at home is because their bosses are not there helicoptering over their every move. Neither are their other colleagues. So, people become freer in their thinking and are more inclined to try things that they normally would not try if they were being monitored all the time. When people are not being monitored all the time, their fear of failure is reduced, and they are able to achieve more. Telecommuting also helps workers to develop their problem-solving and survival skills. These are transferable soft skills that once honed can be invaluable on both a personal and professional level.

To conclude, these eight ways are only a few ways that telecommuting can benefit employees and employers. These eight benefits do not even begin to tip the scales of what makes telecommuting such a desirable and productive way people in the workforce. Surely, there are also drawbacks to telecommuting but for the most part, the average worker seems to prefer it to the other model of commuting to an office every day.