How Remote Jobs

In today’s market, remote jobs, also known as work-from-home jobs, are becoming more and more popular as the use of technology increases. There are some great benefits to having remote work positions within your business, but there are also some situations where it may become a problem.

Trying to decide if remote positions will help your business or not, but we’ll lay out some of the pros and cons here that can help you decide.

Pros of remote jobs

More flexibility.

Hiring remote positions within your company can allow more flexibility for your employees and yourself in terms of when work can be done. In a typical office setting, you and your employees are typically limited to just the work hours of the office, and this can cause strain on you and them. Remote jobs allow for more flexible work hours, which helps ease stress and time constraints you and your team would feel in an office setting.

Better work-life balance.

As a business owner, the mental health of your employees should be a top priority. If they’re good mentally, they do better work, and the morale of your business will benefit. The ability to balance work and day-to-day life can be challenging for many. Providing remote job positions can allow you and your employees to benefit from a healthier work-life balance due to not making you all stuck in an office for work at specific hours.

You have access to a wider range of candidates for your business.

Remote jobs allow business owners to hire from a wider range of potential candidates. On average, people in America will commute around 27 minutes to their job or roughly 20 and a half miles one way. This means your average pool of potential employees is limited to about at most a 20.5-mile radius.

That limitation could keep you from finding the perfect candidate for the job you’re hiring for. If you can eliminate the distance issue for potential candidates, then you have a much larger pool to hire from. It might be the one aspect that allows you to find the perfect fit for your business.

Cut back on commute time and expenses for you and your employees.

The cost to commute might not seem like much day to day but for many. It can quickly add up, and it can be the deciding factor if someone takes a job at your business or not. Let's do some math on the cost of gas if someone were to drive the 20.5-mile distance we looked at earlier. The average price of gas currently in the US is $3.94 per gallon. Going to and back from work one day for average distance will use a little under 2 gallons in the average car that can go 24.20 miles per gallon (https://afdc.energy.gov/data).

If we do the math, the average American driving a car will spend $1,735.55 on gas per year on just a 5-day work week. Those costs can sometimes make or break someone’s interest in working for your business. A remote job would eliminate commuting costs and make people more inclined to want to work at your business.

Work can be done when everyone is most productive.

The average 9-5 may work for some, but it doesn’t work for everyone. As a business owner, it’s important to ensure your business’s productivity is consistent to stay successful. Including remote positions within your business can allow for flexible schedules, which means employees can work when they feel most productive, leading to higher productivity levels for them and your business.

About 20% of the population considers themselves night owls or early birds, which means their ideal productive hours may not fall in the average 9-5 range. If you were to have remote positions available for them, it would give them a chance to reach their full potential at the times that work for them, which would benefit your business overall.

Cons of remote jobs.

As mentioned, remote jobs can improve your small business and make things easier, more productive, and more cost-effective. That’s not to say that some positions would be better in office, though, or that issues wouldn’t arise with remote positions. Let’s take a look at a couple of important things that you should keep in mind if you want to make positions in your small business remote.

There could be difficulty in communication between you and your team members.

There may be times that you, as a business owner, have difficulty setting up meetings and teamwork issues between you and parts of your team. With people in so many different locations working at different times, it’s easy to see how it could be hard to set up meetings, check-ins on projects, or communicate with team members properly without some sort of order.

It makes your small business rely on technology more.

For remote jobs to be able to work, they rely heavily on technology, and we all know how testy it can be at times. If you have a team member who lives hours away and works remotely, but their computer messes up, or power goes out, it can be challenging to get in touch with them until the issue is resolved. Not to mention files for work can be lost or corrupted if something goes wrong, and the work has to be redone.

For more examples of the pros and cons of implementing remote jobs within your business, check out these articles:

• Pros and Cons of Working From Home

• 12 must-know Pros and Cons of Remote Working

• Working Remotely: Pros and Cons (Plus Tips on Teleworking)

Implementing remote jobs for you and your team members at your small business can be extremely beneficial for many reasons.

If you have an interest in learning if remote positions could benefit your business, or if you have them and you’re not sure how to make them work, contact Comprehensive Consulting Solutions for Small Businesses, and we’d be more than happy to help!