exploring the benefits of remote working

If you're considering writing blog content about the benefits of remote work, here are five ideas to get you started: 1. "Maximizing Creativity and Productivity: Surprising Advantages of Working Remotely" 2. "Boosting Mental Health: How Remote Work Can Improve Your Well-Being" 3. "Achieving Work-Life Balance: Advantages of Flexibility in Remote Work" 4. "Saving Money and the Environment: Economic Benefits of Remote Work" 5. "Networking and Career Growth: Social Benefits of Remote Work" Remote work has become increasingly popular in recent years, and for good reason. It offers increased flexibility, cost savings, and improved work-life balance. With the ability to work from anywhere with an internet connection, remote workers can customize their schedules and even the type of work they do. This flexibility can lead to improved productivity and a better work-life balance. Additionally, remote workers can save money on transportation costs, parking fees, and work wardrobe expenses. They can also save on costs associated with maintaining a physical office, such as rent and utilities. Remote work can also lead to improved mental and physical well-being, as well as a more diverse and inclusive workforce. With advancements in technology, remote work has become a viable option for many companies and employees, and the trend will likely continue to grow in the future. If you're interested in writing blog posts about the advantages of remote work, consider these five great ideas: 1. "Maximizing Creativity and Productivity: The Surprising Benefits of Remote Work" 2. "Boosting Mental Health: How Remote Work Can Improve Your Well-being" 3. "Achieving Work-Life Balance: The Advantages of Remote Work Flexibility" 4. "Saving Money and the Environment: The Economic Benefits of Remote Work" 5. "Networking and Career Growth: The Social Benefits of Remote Work"

or a lot of companies or departments, remote working is a real possibility. Keeping your work-life balance in check becomes a lot easier when you have reasons to work from home.

But what about as a rule of thumb? When workers rely heavily on a computer, like countless Agile software development teams all over the world, is there a reason not to? And does working from home increase productivity?

Over the decades there has been hesitance from employers of letting their teams work from home. And for good reason: how do we know that our remote workers are working? And how does remote working work, anyway?

Well, that’s where trust and good technology come in, but if you take the plunge and go for even just a part-time working-from-home arrangement, both employee and employer get to reap the benefits.

Here are 3 good reasons to work from home and become more productive:

Employees Working Remotely Can Reinvest Their Commuting Time

If we’re not working from home then we’re traveling to an office and that travel time is mainly lost time. And studies show that commuting times are getting longer too. Based on 2018 data in the US, the “typical commuter now spends 20 more minutes a week commuting than they did a decade ago”. That all adds up to over nine days a year when we could be doing something better. A lot of people would rather re-invest that time and work remotely to increase their productivity.

But some people do like their commute – it gives them time to read the news, reply to emails, listen to an audiobook (if you’re driving), or just have a few minutes of peace from the demands of their family, something that’s difficult when your workplace is your home.

One of the things that a lot of people notice when they start to work from home is that they find it harder to switch off; they realize they miss this aspect of their commute now that they work remotely.

One of the best ways to get around this is to build a ‘mini commute’ into your new remote working routine. You could take a 15-minute walk at the beginning and end of each day. Not only is this healthy, but it also sends a message to your brain that it’s time to switch modes.

Distractions Go Down, Focus and Productivity Go up When Working Remotely From Home

Working from home also increases productivity because it’s easier to focus. In the office (especially noisy open-plan offices) you have to greet everyone, ask about their weekend, chat about last night’s football results…the list is endless and all these little two-minute chats add up to a lot of time being lost.

There’s also the ‘context switching’ factor which software development teams are particularly familiar with. If you are ‘in the zone’ dealing with a complex piece of code when someone drops by your desk to ask if you can help them with something, you have to stop what you’re doing, change context twice (once to leave the zone and once to get back into it) before you’re productive again. Some reports even suggest that context switching can eat up to 80% of your productivity.

When people are working from home, there are simply fewer ways to get distracted. And if you make full use of the technology you have by changing your notification settings so that you can focus, your productivity shoots up.

Remote Workers More Productive When It Comes to Meetings

Another great distraction is meetings. If you’re making good progress on something, but a meeting is starting now, you have to stop and you lose that burst of productivity.

It’s important to remember that working remotely from home doesn’t make them disappear. But how to stay productive while working from home relies on how you run those meetings. Rather than everyone stopping what they’re doing to dial in at 10 am, it turns something that a lot of developers consider a waste of time into something truly productive because they can provide their daily updates when it’s best for them.

But do we even need so many meetings? In the office there’s free-flowing coffee, you can see who is available, and ‘idea/creativity/brainstorming spaces’ are easy to jump into for a quick chat.

Move that to the working-from-home setting and the mindset changes: do I need to meet that person? We start to get back to basics: what do we need to talk about? If there’s nothing we need to discuss, we’d all much rather be getting the most out of our increased productivity.

And let’s face it, even though the tools we use today have come a long way, there are still some improvements to be made to video conferencing software. We’d all rather keep the amount of time dialed into a short and productive minimum. One of the ways Geekbot is great for that is that you can shift a lot of the meeting topics to be done in advance. For example, if you’re running a scrum team retrospective you can get the team to answer questions on what went well/not so well in advance. Then a remote-working scrum master can filter this information in advance so that during the meeting itself you only need to discuss the actions. No more awkward silences. No more wasted time.

Working From Home Work-Life Balance

One of the main reasons people choose or request to work from home is for the work-life balance. You might have personal commitments like needing to pick your kids up from school, make it on time to an evening class nearby, or just want to maximize time with the family.

And you can’t underestimate how highly this scores in terms of employee satisfaction. A company that makes juggling your working and personal commitments easier values you as a human rather than just a robot churning out work. This means an employee feels more valued by the company, works more productively, and is less likely to look around for other opportunities.