Within the UK a growing consensus has developed that work from home programs are an effective means of cost savings and retaining employees. The popularity of this particular program among employees is primarily due to the following factors:
- The growing nightmare that is commuting in the various major metropolitan centres in the UK
- The fact that parents want to be able to spend more time with their children
It is based on this that this article will argue in favour of the expansion of work from home programs into more companies within the region.
The Nightmare That is Rush Hour In London
Yes, a “nightmare” that is a rather apt description by BBC of the dreaded rush hour periods wherein people take the Underground, buses, or, for those with the money to spare, a taxi to work. However, no matter the mode of transportation you choose (barring the use of helicopters!) you will be stuck in traffic. In fact, the sheer amount of commuter traffic that you experience whether in the form of long lines of people or cars, will definitely increase the amount of time you spend outside of your office or on your way back home. During the worst of the traffic, a person can be stuck commuting for two hours both going there and coming back. This is an added four hours to your daily schedule that you are not getting back and seems rather wasteful in the long run when you factor in the lost hours annually. Based on recent studies examining the amount of time lost, it is estimated that commuters lose roughly 750 hours per year on commuting alone, with more than half of that being stuck in traffic! This is unacceptable since people have better uses of their time rather than having to contend with the nightmare that is London commuting during rush hour.
Technological Innovations
Within the past decade, there have been numerous innovations that do make work from home programs a seamless process of integration into present day company operations. These range from the use of virtual work stations that employees can access online to the use of online conference calls, BlueJeans leading the charge in that particular area. Employees literally don’t even have to be there when it comes to numerous aspects of their jobs and, as such, it simply makes sense to enable them to work from home so that they won’t have to constantly endure the stress of having to commute on a daily basis
Retaining Employees
One of the factors that the Daily Mail states that influences employees to resign from a company in the first place is the fact that they simply have had their fill of having to endure significant amounts of traffic to get to work. Sure, when they first start out at the company everything seems to be fine; however, the longer they experience having to go through rush hour traffic again and again, the more the resentment within them festers. It reaches a point that they will simply choose a company that is closer to where they live simply to help reduce the amount of time they are exposed to the chaos that is rush hour commuting. It is due to this that work from home programs become more appealing since it allows employees to avoid the traffic entirely and work from the comfort of their own home. The benefits of such a system is that it enables companies to present it to their employees as an option based on their distance from the company and individual need. Employees that live farther away or have children are given a greater level of priority for the limited amount of slots that the company is willing to provide. By presenting this option to them, companies will be able to stem the tide of worker resignations on the basis of having to endure traffic day in and day out.
New Parents
For new parents out there, their precious bundle of joy takes precedence over their other responsibilities and UK based companies do understand this. It is not unusual for many companies to provide a month long leave of absence for either new mothers or fathers. However, as the Telegraph.co.uk explains, once the month is up and they need to go back to work, there is a certain level of hesitance. They don’t want to just leave their kid in the hands of the nearest daycare centre. This is why implementing work from home programs that specifically target parents is a good idea. It enables them to spend more time with their kids while at the same time removes the stress that comes with leaving their child alone.
Based on what has been presented so far, it can be seen that work from home programs are a great way for companies to make the lives of their employees more comfortable and, as such, should be implemented on a wider scale in the UK.
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