It’s a question that everyone is asking at the moment. As the UK begins to adopt a living with COVID strategy, and with the government encouraging people to return to offices and begin to return to normality. We are starting to see a lot of businesses sticking to their guns and keeping their staff at home. So let’s look at the question, is remote working here to stay?
Let’s first take a look at why companies are opting to keep their staff at home. Well firstly, and probably most importantly, the financial benefits. Whilst keeping staff at home they can keep the core staff who need to work in the office in a much smaller office, saving money on rent space and resources. Video conferencing has also developed to the extent that collaboration need not suffer as a consequence of people working from home.
A lot of people have also grown fond of working from home. Saving money on commuting and being able to be around family and pets has been one of a few benefits that have come from the pandemic. And so they are also hesitant to return to the office. And it’s this resistance that the government is fighting against and they encourage people that it’s safe to return to offices despite at one time saying the total opposite
The talent pool you have access to as a business grows hugely
If you are looking to employ someone for a certain position within your business, if it is solely office-based, you are limited on the talent pool you can attract due to limitations on transport/commuting. Whereas if you are a company offering a remote job, the talent pool that you can pick from grows almost exponentially.
To put it in perspective, if you are based in Manchester, you can probably realistically attract candidates from Greater Manchester which has a population of 2.8 million people, and that number greatly decreases depending upon how skilled the role is. Whereas the population of the United Kingdom is 67.2 million as of 2020. And even if you cut that number down into the people who are skilled enough for the job the number is huge.
The environmental benefits
The final group of benefits we are going to look at are the environmental benefits. With let’s say 100 staff not commuting to the office each day and instead of working from home, this is a huge reduction in pollution from cars And that is just sampled from one business and 100 staff. Multiply this by the number of companies and employees currently working from home and there is a considerable and noticeable benefit to the environment from home working.
So let’s go back to the question, is remote working here to stay? With considerable confidence, the answer is yes. Maybe not to the extent it once was, but it will always be around now. To keep up to date with all of the news from the digital world, make sure you subscribe to us here at Laskos.com.