How many times have you seen this opening scene in films: The alarm clock blasts at 6 AM. The lead character slams the noisy contraption and lumbers into the shower as some vibey soundtrack plays during the whole scene. Before long, he’s all shaved up, necktied and pouring brewed in the kitchen. He’ll soon be out of the house, briefcase in hand, strapped in his Honda, driving straight into a…traffic jam?
This scene would soon feel alien to many Netflix watchers, and not because there’s a raging pandemic outside, but because technology has made it possible to do serious, productive and creative work from home…or from anywhere in the globe.
This is the gift of remote work.
What is “remote work?”
It’s when employees don’t go to an office or a central hub to perform tasks, but instead stay at home, at a coffee shop or maybe even the beach. Serious workers simply fire up a laptop, connect to the web and work away.
This was what companies and employees resorted to when the entire globe was on lockdown but work had to continue. Offices and establishments were shut, but businesses were still going and services were being rendered at the speed of light.
This nifty set-up, if you think about it, brings a lot of advantages, both for employers and employees.
Remote Work Significantly Reduces Costs
A substantial part of a business’ expense goes to renting the space in which tasks are performed. Especially for businesses that required a “best foot forward” strategy (eg. big law firms, banks, and consulting agencies), where one needs to maintain plush offices in the hottest zones of the business district, the budget for their annual rent would be a truckload.
In essence, you’re paying money for real estate.
But what happens when clients don’t even come to your office because, one, they are on the other side of the world. Two, if they’re in your region, they’re too busy to go downtown. Or three, maybe they would have gone, had they not found your competitor online first. (Those guys dominated the online game.)
These are some of the reasons why Manhattan businesses are vacating their prime spots in Midtown. So much business is now done virtually, it negates the age-old wisdom of maintaining a glossy office lavished with expensive furniture. It used to be, “Don’t let go of this space, you’re lucky you have it! The rent will pay itself many times over.” But today? In these times and with how tech is developing? Not so much. New York commercial real estate took some serious hits.
As it turns out, Covid taught us more than singing “Happy Birthday” while washing hands. It made businesses realize that it makes load more sense to migrate tasks online and maintain a distributed workforce than maintain real estate that clients don’t ever go to, or employees hate reporting to every day.
But this is not all bad. Switching to remote work is a cost-saving measure and an opportunity for potent budget realignments. Because you don’t maintain an office, you also do not have the financial accoutrements that come with it: electric and water bills, internet, cleaning supplies, taxes, food etc.
These savings can then go to other concerns and can make your business that much more competitive. Employers have realized this and have acted accordingly. (Oftentimes, in a highly competitive industry, you have no choice but to go remote.)
To their surprise, remote working arrangements have gone swimmingly well.
But it’s not just a boon for employers. It’s a win for employees too!
Your Employees Want It
Flexitime is being used by employers to entice talent, especially at a time when there’s a high rate of staff turnover. From the perspective of the employee, it’s easy to see why remote working brings a slew of advantages.
First, it eliminates the need for the daily commute. In many countries, especially in their big cities, commuting is a big time suck. And it’s not just time that’s wasted. Billions worth of productivity is lost each year. Coming out of the morning rush, your employees arrive at the office weary and stressed. And all that happens at the beginning of the day.
So, anticipating traffic, employees are forced to wake up ever earlier—skipping on well-deserved and much-needed sleep and rest. Over the long-term, this will affect their performance, productivity, and creativity, and eventually, your bottom line.
By giving them the freedom to set their work hours, remote work helps your workers achieve the work-life balance that they have in mind. Workers can do their thing, at a time when they are most productive and creative. In a 2019 Owl Labs study, full-time remote workers reported that they are 22% happier than their office-bound counterparts. These work-from-home employees also worked 43% more. Companies are therefore more likely to retain them and maintain the arrangement.
A study has found that remote work, releasing workers from the strictures of the office, is good for creative work. It is said that in a telecommuting environment, one’s productivity increases…especially at creative tasks. Remote work not only helps you get the best employees, but it also helps these employees do their best.
For sure, remote work has its challenges, and we are learning more about how people are adjusting to the new realities at work.
But suffice it to say, that like Covid, which would remain with us, (perhaps in the form of the common cold), remote work will be here to stay.
Remote Work Is The Future
Scratch that. Remote work is not the future. It’s already here, and the businesses and organizations that utilize it are reaping the tremendous competitive advantages afforded by running a distributed workforce.
We at Kinetic Innovative Staffing have helped hundreds of companies around the world hire professional remote workers from the Philippines.
Earlier, we talked about how businesses can significantly decrease costs by maintaining a distributed workforce instead of maintaining an office. Enterprises who’ve done this have become more streamlined and therefore more competitive in their respective industries. But that is just one of the ways remote work can lower your costs.
There’s another piece to the puzzle.
Today, there really is no difference between “1 mile from the office” and being on the other side of the world. When communications move at the speed of light, space and location become irrelevant. Now, businesses are not just limited to employees who can drive to the office every morning.
In short, the world is your oyster and you can hire anybody on the globe so long as they have the requisite talents and skills—and a reliable internet connection, of course. Because tasks have been so thoroughly digitalized, and collaboration made possible virtually, you could actually be in New York and be closely working with somebody in Asia.
And because not all places are as expensive as New York, London or LA, employers enjoy the benefits of drastically lower labour rates in other places.
Kinetic Innovative Staffing helps companies find remote Filipino professionals to work for companies around the world.
The Philippines, over the decades, has been a proven resource of talented and hard-working professionals from virtual assistants, customer service representatives, software developers, graphic artists, writers, legal assistants, social media managers and more.
“The Philippines also has the highest percentage when it comes to the level of enthusiasm for fully remote work.” It’s a well-spring of highly-skilled, English speaking workers who can hit the ground running and help take your business to the next level. And all this comes at, on average, 70% lower rates than what companies are used to.
Remote work, with its cost reduction potentials, has truly become an integral part of any organization’s competitive strategy, and we at Kinetic can help you get a solid footing in the new realities of business.
In the future, remote workers will be donning their VR headsets to work in the “salt mines” of the “metaverse.” (Let Zuckerberg and company figure that one out.) But in the meantime, Kinetic Innovative Staffing will help your business get the best talent at the fraction of the usual cost.
Talk to us.
Kinetic Innovative Staffing has been providing hundreds of companies in the Asia Pacific, North America, the Middle East, and Europe with professionals working remotely from the Philippines since 2013. Get in touch to know more.
