Telecommuting: advantages, tools and trends

Today, the term telework is found daily in different areas of our daily life and although it is still something new, the truth is that it is not. It was in 1973 when the American physicist Jack Nills, chasing a saving of fuel costs involving displacement, he coined for the first time. His proposal was simple, “bring the work to the worker and not the worker to work,” but it was somewhat ahead of its time idea.

It was not until the decade of the nineties, with the expansion of the Internet and personal computers, and especially since the end of the decade of the two thousand, with the emergence and proliferation of mobile devices, when the concept of telework began to charge the importance it deserves in the shelter of the interesting advantages it brings.

Reasons for telecommuting

Today, telecommuting continues to be a growing trend apace, both in our country and outside it. According to the National Institute of Statistics, 27% of Spanish companies have employees working off-site, where a year ago only 13 % of them promoted flexible work policies. But what are the reasons for telecommuting? What are the advantages of telecommuting?

Betting on telecommuting is a smart business needs and employees,” Kornelius Brunner response.

Telecommuting brings considerable number and diversity of benefits for both the company and the worker:  

• It facilitates geographical expansion of the company, while not accurate installations or endless red tape.
• Is an interesting cost savings at the level of spaces and infrastructure, material resources or energy consumption.
• Save time on travel, while reducing spending on transportation and environmental pollution.
• Facilitates flexible schedules.
• It reduces stress and facilitates the reconciliation of work and family life.
• Increases worker productivity by up to 13%, as stated by a study by Stanford University (USA), while this dedicated around 11% more of their time to work, according to a study INE.
• Employee loyalty which, feeling happier, arises not change company or shorter hours, for example, to have a child. Significantly reduces absenteeism.
• It facilitates collaborative work in real time.

Of course, teleworking can also pose difficulties associated with the absence of a working environment as isolation of the worker or the employer convey a sense of lack of control over the employee; You can also make it difficult meetings although, as we shall see, today’s technology offers great solutions.

Telecommuting Tools

The basic and fundamental tool of all teleworker is a computer or mobile device with internet connection, something that every worker has in his office. From there, other tools will be especially related to communication, file management in the cloud, and so on. What are these tools?  

• Smartphone and tablet, to work with the convenience of doing it at any time and from anywhere.
• A virtual or VPN through which private network by entering a user name and password, access the company server where the data with which it works are stored.
• Email account with which to send and receive all kinds of information, documents, images and so on.
• An instant messaging service as Telegram, WhatsApp or Skype, which allowed to remain in constant contact with other colleagues, send and receive real-time short instructions.
• A videoconferencing service, ideal for remote meetings. Skype is the most used, also Google Hangouts.
• Phone service in the cloud VoIP (calls via data connection), which represents a significant cost savings and productivity worker feeds.
• A system for managing work schedules, holiday periods, so as Sesame.
• Tools for collaborative work at a distance as Asana or Trello, allowing track the status of a project, make comments, corrections, add tasks, etc. in real time. Slack platforms like Yammer or also provide a place for collaboration among team members through a corporate social network.
• To jot down ideas that arise when, capture web pages, images and other, nothing better than Evernote. Keeps all your information organized in notebooks and classified with labels and also facilitate its powerful search engine to find information even within images that include handwritten text.
• Services to store and share files in the cloud as DropBox, Google Drive, OneDrive or Box.
• The specific software that the company can use in its management.

Current trends in telecommuting

The so-called generation of “millennials”, those who currently have an age around thirty , who have grown up in an environment of unknown comfort for their parents and for whom connectivity and new technologies are a necessity , is the best suited to telecommute, while that has driven the change in labor benefits that companies offer.

Telecommuting is already a trend in itself. As mentioned at the beginning, the variety of benefits granted by both employer and employee pushes to continued growth in all sectors and / or jobs where possible. But within this trend to telecommute, also changes occur, mainly under the umbrella of the development of new technologies. Often when we hear the term telecommuting comes to mind the image of someone who , still in his pajamas with a cup of coffee in hand , sits in front of the home computer to perform the tasks entrusted to it , but the truth it is that this image is already outdated and far from reality.

The trend towards mobility is increasing thanks to mobile devices and the expansion of 4G LTE networks which increase the connection speed by much faster and effective communications. To this must be added the On -the -Go technology that, thanks to the USB and Bluetooth connectivity allows the teleworker to connect a mouse, keyboard, digital camera or any other device providing versatility and portability to be connected and lead your office with any part of the city or the planet, or coworking spaces where maintaining and expanding the network of contacts thus avoiding the possibility of feeling isolated.

And this trend directly related to mobility and portability, is the trend BYOD or Bring Your Own Device, that is, “bring your own device”. More and more companies that provide employees access to resources the same as databases , electronic mail, file servers , and others which brings great advantages as facilitates omnichannel experience, simplifies processes, gives absolute mobility , it reduces stress, facilitates work – life balance , you reduce costs for the company, and so on.  

In conclusion, telecommuting is a reality that grows by leaps and bounds; companies promote flexible labor policies and technology has already provided everything you need. Its multiple benefits tread their few disadvantages, to which they may face from the professionalism, order and discipline.