The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us all that we do not really need to be in office to get our work done. Enterprises had always been skeptical about letting their employees work from home, primarily because of the concerns for lack of productivity. Little did we all know that work from home can serve as a big driver of business growth in a world sans pandemic.
With proper planning, and right kind of collaboration and performance monitoring tools, enterprises can reap numerous benefits from remote work environment that would eventually contribute to business growth.
Ensure business continuity during pandemics
The world is in the middle of a pandemic right now. Enterprises that have managed to keep moving forward are those that have embraced the work from anywhere culture. The Covid-19 situation will pass. But this might not be the last crisis of our life that have had such a massive impact on businesses. Year after year, we see the wrath of nature in multiple forms, droughts, flash floods, cyclones, which affect different parts of the world. By implementing an enterprise-wide work-from-anywhere policy, a business can save itself from total jeopardy during such times and ensure business continuity to a great extent. Even if it gets difficult to go remote with an entire organization, critical functions, like finance, legal, HR, governance, customer interfaces, can certainly work remotely to ensure continuity.
Save on real estate costs
By letting employees work from anywhere, employers can save all those overhead expenses which happen in the form of rent, lease, maintenance costs etc. Coworking spaces present in many metro cities can be used, providing employees with the required infrastructure and space to work. In the long run, employers need not purchase or lease any new office buildings which generally burns a hole in their pockets. To put things into perspective, an office space in Mumbai which can seat 500 employees, costs around INR 10 crore per year, which translates into INR 2 lakh/employee/year. A company can save this money if employees are enabled to work from anywhere.
Access wider pool of talent
If an organization has a well implemented work-from-anywhere policy, it can hire the right talents to meet its business needs from anywhere. Particularly in a country like India, where resources are spread across the breadths and the lengths of the country, the option of having access to resources from anywhere will give an organization, especially starts-ups, an edge over others. Organizations’ needs are getting more specific by the day, where people with high expertise in a domain or a tool are needed. Having access to broader pool of talent to satisfy such specific needs can prove to be a huge strategic and competitive advantage.
Hire subject experts on need basis
Freelance culture is on the rise and more and more people are switching over to a freelance career from a regular full-time job. Co-working spaces were already popular among freelancers, as these places, apart from providing them with the needed infrastructure to work effectively, also provides them with opportunities to network with like-minded people and get more opportunities to work. Co-working spaces give a sense of community to freelancers and do not make them feel isolated, when working on their own for long periods of time. As the lockdown is eased, we can expect the usage of co-working spaces by freelancers to resume steadily because of the benefits that the freelancing community enjoys at co-working spaces.
As enterprises often face business needs that are time-bound and require high expertise, freelancers provide them with an ideal cost-effective option, which results in a win-win situation. As enterprises look to recover from the dud period of last 2-3 months, and get back on their feet, embracing freelance culture can pay rich dividends.
Achieve business expansion with ease
By implementing an organization-wide remote work policy, business expansion can be achieved effortlessly and cost-effectively. Conventionally, expanding business meant setting up new offices, recruiting only the local talent, or demanding employees to relocate and having physical access to the new market area. Remote work removes these obstacles that businesses face while trying to expand or scale up and paves an easier path for the same.
Efficient outsourcing
Outsourcing certain critical business processes is something that many businesses cannot do without. While it is mostly cost-efficient, there are times, when businesses will have to provide office space and devices to these vendors. By implementing a highly secure remote work solution, businesses will be able to let all third-party users to use their own devices from anywhere. Also, outsourcing need not be done considering geographical limitations, as employers will have options from all across the globe.
Cut down on IT management costs
Implementation of a work from anywhere solution would need a secure remote access to corporate resources. Employees should be able to securely access all the resources and tools they need to perform at their best, without putting corporate applications or network at risk. Moreover, a secure remote access solution should empower users to work on any laptops, desktop or smartphone, be it corporate-allotted, rented or personal. While employees get the flexibility to work from anywhere, enterprises can keep the governance in their hands. This would trim down the expenses on IT support and infrastructure.
Implementing a robust work from anywhere infrastructure will keep organizations in good stead in the long run. But not all employees or the nature of their work would be suited for working from home. Having said that, it is an employer’s responsibility to provide the right culture and mindset that an employee needs to achieve maximum productivity when working from home.