5 Great Reasons Why the Remote Team Culture is Winning

There has been a lot of debate lately on whether 100% remote work is better than hybrid or in-office settings. Whichever team you side with, you can no longer avoid the prevailing work-from-home (WFH) model. In fact, in the post COVID world, if you switch to a purely on-site work setting, you’re likely to start seeing a sharp increase in your employee turnover rate soon.

The truth is, remote work is no longer an anomaly because its benefits outweigh in-office attendance. In fact, the work-from-home trend has seen a 24% increase in the past year alone, and it continues on a rising trajectory. 

Here’s what you can expect if you opt for a remote working model. 

All the Good Reasons for Allowing your Team to WFH 

If you’re still unsure if WFH is meant for your team, we’ve compiled a list of some proven benefits that will change your mind (in favor of remote/hybrid work, of course):

Work-life balance is easier to maintain

Your team spends a good 8 to 9 hours of the day working, and that’s just if they’re not doing overtime. Take 6 to 8 hours out to rest at night, and you’re left with 7 hours. That is 7 hours to spend time with family, have a social life, follow a hobby, and carry out important chores that have been pending for a while – 7 hours for roughly all of that. 

Sounds like a tight schedule to maintain? Well, some of your employees may make matters worse by cutting down hours from their personal and social life to add extra hours to work. From the surface, it looks like your team will spend more time working, which is good for your company, right?

Wrong!

If employees begin to sacrifice their personal life for work, they will soon begin to experience burnout due to work-life imbalance,which will eventually reflect in their plummeting productivity at work (the irony!).

Remote work solves this problem by allowing your team to balance the different parts of their life in a more sustainable way. It allows them to make efficient use of their time by mixing some routine chores with work. They can take an extra hour of break to pick up children from school or get that plumbing fixed. 

At the same time, they’re also spending time with family. We won’t call it ‘quality time’ per se, but being around everyone and occasionally giving undivided attention to loved ones is surely a significant upgrade from being at work all day.

When employees aren’t stressed about spending time with family or getting chores done, they find themselves in a much more stable mental state altogether, which also allows them to be more productive at work. All in all, remote work pushes your team towards a better work-life balance.

Recommended read: Your Definitive Guide for Building a Remote Work Policy 

You save a lot of time, money, and energy, literally.

Traveling to work is a hassle for so many people, especially if you have to travel from afar. And God forbid if you drive and get stuck in rush-hour traffic, it doesn’t take long before you begin to lose it. Taking an Uber or Subway may tone the problem down, but it still persists and mainly due to the same reason – high traffic. 

The point is, regardless of how you or your team travels to work, stress and mental fatigue cannot be avoided, which eventually lowers productivity. There are studies around it too. 

One study states that one of the biggest advantages of remote work is that employees don’t have to travel, which saves time, money, and mental energy. Another study revealed that long work commutes are also associated with decreased job satisfaction. This research also highlighted that people begin to face mental health issues if they have to travel long routes to and from work every day. 

On the flip side, saving commuting time means your team has extra hours to complete more tasks with better focus, share some of that (saved) time with their families, and enjoy more savings. Employees also have more time to sleep since they don’t have to wake up an hour earlier to get ready for work. 

The point is, not having to commute is bliss and working remotely allows you to experience this first-hand.

Savings come standard with remote work

Businesses have complex revenue models, forecasting programs, and accounting books to keep track of performance. This helps the C-Suite to see how they can scale the organization and increase the influx of money. But at the heart of all those complex calculations is one simple formula:

Revenue – Costs = Profit

You, as a manager, want to reduce costs associated with production to increase the ROI of your team, and that’s where remote work has really helped teams prosper. With remote teams: 

• You don’t have to worry about potential on-job accidents and resulting hefty payouts in damages
• You get to save the cost of utilities by a significant margin
• You don’t have to worry about office supplies running out every other weak

In addition to all the cost-saving benefits, you’re also contributing to a greener environment by reducing energy consumption altogether. 

Your team’s ROI doesn’t just go up due to reduced office costs; the differentiating factor is the increased employee productivity, which is among the most significant perks of working from home. Which brings us to our next point…

… There’s a whopping increase in individual and team productivity

Many studies have been conducted over the past few years to find the correlation between team productivity and remote work. Almost all of them have concluded that employees are more productive while working from home compared to an in-office environment. One such study conducted by Connect Solutions found that 24% of the employees are more efficient while working from home, while 77% reported greater productivity.

This is mainly because of the reduced stress from commuting, a better work-life balance, and the ability to work in flexible shifts to match their most productive hours of the day. All of this translates into an improved mental state and work focus, which translates into better outputs and project completion rates. 

In short, allowing remote work means your team gets more quality work done in less time, making it a key WFH benefit for employers.

You can leverage this by completing projects on time and then taking more clients on board to increase revenue and scale your business.

Employees are generally happier

And indulge in free word-of-mouth marketing!

Part of being a good team lead or manager is keeping your team happy; it’s a fact that has been proven by numerous research studies. For instance, one Glassdoor survey found that around 87% of employees expect their managers to help them in retaining a healthy work-life balance.  

You do that, and your employees will be happy to invest more effort into work, essentially throwing the concept of quiet quitting out the window. 

And once you do that, your team will chant your organization’s name in their social circle…(a bit too dramatic?).

Well, that may be an oversell, but American Psychological Association (APA)’s report on the association between employee well-being and leadership support proved that 89% of your team would recommend your organization if you support their well-being initiatives. 

The truth is, employees enjoy the benefits of working from home and if offered, most of them will choose it without second thoughts. 

What are the Positives Of 100% Working From Home?

When we say working from home, we’re referring to both 100% remote work and hybrid routines. Both of them have their own benefits but going completely remote can take an edge in some areas like:

1. Your team saves more money on commuting since employees don’t have to go to work at all. Furthermore, they don’t have to order out during lunchtime or pitch in for that birthday cake the team bought for Jake, which can add up to considerable savings over the month.  
2. Since there is absolutely zero traveling time, employees’ stress levels from traveling through rush hours is reduced significantly.
3. Employees don't have to switch their routine during the week, which is a flexibility they don’t get in a hybrid model.
4. Continuing our third point, time management becomes easier when you have to follow a similar routine throughout the week. This also reflects in your productivity during the day.

Recommended read: Going Remote? These 4 Tips Will Help Manage Your Team 

Whether you manage a fully remote team or work in a hybrid model, your core focus should always be employee productivity. Automated time-tracking tools are designed to help you with that by allowing you to monitor your team’s activity throughout the day and ensure high productivity levels.

The Right Tool to Make Your Team More Productive 

What if we tell you that you can add to the above-mentioned list of benefits by making your remote team even more productive?

That’s where timegram can help.

timegram is a zero-surveillance time tracking and project management tool designed to make remote teams more productive by giving you relevant insights into individual and team performances, instilling accountability within the team and allowing everyone to focus on the core job tasks. 

You can learn all about the features of timegram here. 

Want first-hand experience with our productivity tool? Sign-up now! 

FAQs

What are the biggest struggles of working remotely?

Remote work comes with its pros and cons. Some of the biggest struggles of working remotely are:

• Communication gaps can make hinder workflow
• No social interaction or networking can be taxing, especially for extroverts
• In-home distractions can sometimes make it difficult to focus

You can avoid most of these struggles by using relevant tools for productivity enhancement.

Does working from home make you happier?

A study of 12,455 employees found that remote work is strongly associated with employee happiness, which increases by 20% if working from home is allowed. Millennials, in particular, were found to be the keenest generation to work from home. The study also revealed that employees become less happy if they have to return to work in person. 

What should you not do when working remotely?

If you want to be productive while working remotely, you should avoid doing the following:

Making the bed or dining table your workstation: always try to have a dedicated workspace.

Relying on poor internet: it’s best to have a good backup internet connection or an excellent primary one, to ensure there aren’t any lags during important meetings.

Taking long breaks: just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Short and frequent breaks are encouraged for productivity, while longer breaks are generally considered a productivity killer.