A new research conduct by the University of Sydney revealed more than half of workers surveyed wanted flexible arrangements that allow workers to work from home one or two days a week. In addition, the study observed a dramatic increase in support for compressed work weeks.
Some of the largest businesses in the world, such as Microsoft and Twitter, have publicly expressed support for remote work, but the question for small to medium businesses is whether work from home arrangements suit the nature of work, as well as the operations and culture of their business.
Top of mind issues – Productivity, Cost Savings, and Policies
While some businesses have fully embraced this new normal and in turn implemented new policies, and see it as an opportunity to save money on overheads, the primary concern has been and continues to be staff productivity when working from home.
Each business is unique in the way it operates, in workplace culture, and process of driving effective employee performance. The future of remote work will require a set of policies and company regulations that balance the commercial needs of the business, and the desire for flexible work from home policies. These new considerations for workplace policies, may need to include process and operations that ensure high levels of productivity, adequate performance tracking, and where required, monitoring of employees.
Ready-to-use ‘Work From Home’ policy templates
Access work from home policies templates within the BetterHR plan, and these ready-to-use templates will save you time, and if you have unique business requirements, one of our experience HR consultants can assist with tailoring policies and by providing guidance on employee relations. In addition, BetterHR offers an Employee Mobile App, at no extra cost, with remote work ready features such as clock-in and clock-off, plus geo location logs.