Why your business should consider more home-working positions.

Well it’s a strange position we find ourselves in. With many of us working from home, we are all having to adapt the way we work, day to day. Employers, many of whom have been against home-working, find themselves in the position of having to trust their staff and allow them to work under their own steam to complete business tasks. Employees are also having to learn that working from home isn’t all what they had hoped and dreamt about and are having to learn how to apply some self-discipline and good working practices.

Nothing will ever be the same again.

I am hoping this situation will give employers time to reflect that home-working isn’t so bad after all. Businesses have shown that they can still effectively run even if they can’t physically see their team between 9 to 5 every day. The technology to facilitate this has been around for several years. Some would even say that fewer distractions have led to business becoming more efficient. Not only that, think of the travel time your staff are saving giving them a much better work-life balance.

Barclays boss, Jes Staley said in a visionary statement, “Having thousands of bank workers in big, expensive city offices “may be a thing of the past”, showing that even complex organisations as large as banks would make huge overhead savings on renting office premises.

Therefore, I hope one lesson we will learn when we come out the other side, is that businesses should now consider more home-working positions in the future, as this will give them access to a much wider talent pool not previously available to them.  Having your team meeting in the office one day per week, combined with regular daily meeting via Zoom or Teams, is a worthwhile sacrifice. And there is plenty of technology out there to measure productivity if you need a comfort blanket!