Remote working has been shown to increase the productivity of an employee. Since the
start of the pandemic, many organizations have been forced to adhere to the strong
measures that their governments have placed to slow the spread of COVID-19 (Wenzel,
Stanske, S., & Lieberman, M. B. 2021). These measures make it hard for new and existing
employees to stay productive at work as they are required to transition to a remote virtual
work environment. Though widely considered a negative change to working culture, remote
working does come with various benefits which should be recognised moving forward.
One positive impact of remote working is less commute stress. Commute stress among
employees are caused by a multitude of factors which range from road congestion, delays
and overcrowding of public transport options as well as road safety for those that drive
(Emre, & De Spiegeleare, S. 2021). Employees may also perceive the time spent on
commuting as a loss as that time can be used to do other more potentially productive
activities (Emre, & De Spiegeleare, S. 2021), which further contributes to their stress levels.
In addition to physical effort, cognitive effort is also required when commuting.
In certain situations, employees would have to account for unexpected changes to their
travel routes. This can be made extremely complex if, for example, road closures occur due
to accidents or landslides, employees will have to seek out alternative paths to make their
daily commute. This can be an especially stressful experience if road restrictions or other
factors restrict the number of available paths. Daily exposure to these stress factors can be
detrimental to an employee’s mental well-being and may affect productivity in the long run.
Studies have also shown that employees who have to travel for a long period of time would
greatly benefit from remote working as they can allocate the saved commuting time to
additional work (Morikawa. 2022; Kelliher, Richardson, J., & Boiarintseva, G. 2019).
Commuting stress will hence be significantly reduced as employees will no longer be
required to travel to and from work.
Apart from the saved time, employees will also be less likely to get infected with COVID-19
with the reduced physical contact among commuters (Morikawa. 2022). Should an
employee get infected, it would hinder productivity in their work as they will be required to
take sick leave to recover from the virus. Hence with the need of commuting reduced,
employees’ productivity and work quality would increase due to the reduced stress and
more freed up time.
Another impact that remote working will have on employees is location independence.
Studies have shown that employees who are allowed to choose a “work from home” setting
have an increase in productivity by 13% (Bloom, Liang, J., Roberts, J., & Ying, Z. J. 2015). This
is beneficial for people who are required to move frequently such as military spouses.
Having the flexibility to work from anywhere allows them to continually contribute and
grow in one organization rather than restarting their career with every move. However,
working from home only offers employees temporal flexibility towards their work
arrangements.
The case of Spotify illustrates the benefits of remote working. In addition to temporal
flexibility, Spotify also offers its employees geographical flexibility. This means that instead
of a “work from home” setting, employees of Spotify are given the flexibility to work from
any location. This positively affects employee productivity; employees who are given
temporal and geographic flexibility have demonstrated an 4.4% increase in productivity than
those who were not (Choudhury, Foroughi, C., & Larson, B. 2021).
An additional benefit from geographical flexibility is the ability to work in a familial
environment during the pandemic. This promotes a sense of family conciliation and unity,
which can in turn lead to more positive employee perceptions of their working environment
and increase work pleasure. (Saura, Ribeiro-Soriano, D., & Zegarra Saldaña, P. 2022).
In addition to this, remote working allows employees to avoid areas with high rent and
mortgage. This is especially true for positions in tech that are situated in places like Silicon
Valley with extremely high standards of living. Employees’ careers and work requirements
will no longer be limited to the geolocation that they are situated in and they are given the
capacity to work and grow in a career of their choosing.