Why Every Boss Should Consider Officewide Telecommuting Arrangements

Employee Satisfaction is Just One of Many Benefits to Flexible Work

So, you're one of the last holdouts. All around you, companies and organizations have jumped on the telecommuting bandwagon. But in the department where you're the boss, everyone is still showing up and chugging through the 8 to 5 routine, battling traffic, daycare issues, and your clock-watching nature.

Whether you realize it or not, chances are that at least some of your employees are looking to greener pastures. Even those who don't wish to telecommute full-time wouldn't mind the opportunity to work from home a day or two a week.

But you've got an organization to run and customers to serve. If they don't like doing things the old school way, they can head out to the highway, right? If work was fun, then it wouldn't be called "work." Trying to arrange work from home options for your staff is a headache that you just don't need.

Before you decide that's the way it has to be, think about the benefits of telecommuting from your company's perspective. As a manager, it is understandably part of your job to ask 'what's in it for the company?" The answer is that in almost every organization, there is a significant amount of work that can be done off-site, and in fact is better performed without the distractions of a busy workplace.

The option to work from home as little as one day a week, or even every other week, can significantly improve quality of life for your employees. But beyond that, it can be just plain good for business. Here a few things that even the most old-school of workplace operators should think about before shutting the door on telecommuting options:

1. Yes, your employees will do others things when they're working from home. But they'll still work harder.
There's no doubt about it. When an employee is working from home, she's probably going to do a few loads of laundry in between returning calls, responding to emails and writing that proposal. She may take a break and chop up the salad for her family's dinner. If she's really living dangerously, she might even run to the store on her lunch break to pick up a few things her household needs, instead of wolfing down a limp sandwich at her desk like she usually has to do in the office.