Entice New Hires With Remote Work Cost Savings
It’s a tough time to be an HR manager. In the post-pandemic era of labor shortages and economic turbulence, talented hires are hard to find and harder to keep. A company with a robust remote working culture can stand out from the crowd - if they know how to market the cost savings associated with this way of working.
From skipping the daily commute to cutting their clothing budget, remote and hybrid workers can save big bucks by staying home. Untethered to the office, they can save while they earn, and that’s a huge selling point if you’re looking to take on staff.
Benefits for remote employees
In the midst of the pandemic, lockdowns kept most employees at home. With restrictions mostly gone, many are now working in a hybrid model. Of those workers who can do their jobs remotely, around 6 in 10 are working from home all or most of the time, according to Pew Research, and the vast majority are doing this out of choice rather than necessity.
Employees may know the obvious work-life benefits to remote or hybrid working, but they don’t always appreciate just how much it benefits their budget. HR managers should be ready to communicate those perks when attracting and retaining talent.
Commuting costs - Avoiding rush hour traffic is always a great feeling, but making your gas go further is even more enticing for drivers - especially given the climbing prices at the pumps, which show no signs of coming back down in the short-term. According to one study, remote workers in New York save $381 a year on gas prices alone while those on the other side of the country, in San Diego, cut their annual gas bill by $486.
Remote workers in Los Angeles save around $510 overall each year compared to those who drive to work, according to World Economic Forum data. And full-time remote employees in Atlanta, Georgia save even more - getting back $555 a year. Atlanta’s hybrid workers (those who work in-office 50% of the time) save $278 over the same timeframe.
Those without cars will also feel the benefit of waving goodbye to the daily commute, by saving money on bus passes and other public transport.
Housing - The real estate market is also on an upswing, and as remote working becomes more popular, workers are avoiding the soaring rental and housing prices in urban areas, where offices are typically located, to find more affordable housing outside the city limits. Remote work can even help renters make the leap to becoming homeowners themselves.
In some US cities, rentals are becoming much harder to find, and the cost of renting is going up. If an employee can skip the commute most - or all - days of the week, they will be able to find a more affordable rental unit further from the office. This is an especially important sticking point for companies hiring younger workers, who may not be ready to enter the housing market yet.
Clothing and other expenses - Offices generally require professional attire (or at least something better than PJs!) and it can get expensive. By working from home, employees can stick to their regular wardrobe and avoid pricey shopping trips. They can also skip the daily burgers from the lunch place around the corner from the office, the breakfast smoothie during the morning commute, going out for coffee with colleagues - accumulated small savings that make a big difference over the long-term.
How can employers save money with hybrid work?
Dividing their time between home and the office may be a win-win for workers, but what about employers?
While employers will face the same expenses from real estate and utilities, they also enjoy more flexibility with the hybrid approach - having the option of moving from high-cost commercial facilities to less urban-centric areas. They may also be able to cut costs by transitioning to open workspaces with hot desks, reducing their square footage per worker.
There are opportunities to find savings in expenses, such as giving employees a stipend to outfit their home office too. This will invariably be less costly than setting up workstations in a traditional office.
But the real value in hybrid and remote models is employee satisfaction. An unhappy team is an unmotivated, unproductive, and disloyal team. If you want to keep your staff, and take on more, you need to give them competitive perks that reflect the changing work environment.
Employee Productivity Monitoring solution Prodoscore is ideal for remote or hybrid workspaces, helping managers keep track of their teams, regardless of whether they’re in-office, on the go, or at home.
The central interface collates daily activity to give each worker a productivity score, based on how they interact with the company’s digital tools and platforms. In this way, managers can see who’s falling behind, who’s performing as expected, and who may be overdoing it. To learn more about Prodoscore’s unobtrusive monitoring solutions, contact us to schedule a free demonstration.
