During the Coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, companies reluctantly forced millions of employees to work from home. They did not realize that even workers who previously said they could never work from home are starting to enjoy the benefits of remote work.
Many employees don’t want to go back to the office.
Working from home is a true blessing. Working from home has many real and tangible benefits; let’s explore them.
1. No Commuting & Time Saved Every Day
One of my favorite benefits of working from home is the lack of commuting. Removing the commute from your life has many knock-on effects, which will be covered in the following sections.
My local office is approximately a 45-minute drive away. By skipping the commute, I save 90 minutes per day. The average person has roughly 30 days of vacation and public holidays yearly. So, removing the weekends and vacations from the year, we have 230 working days or commute days per year. Suppose your career will span 35 years because you plan to retire early.
This equates to 90 minutes X 230 days X 35 years = 12,075 commuting hours.
This means you could save 503 days of your life, 72 weeks, or 1.3 years.
Removing a typical commute could save you 1.3 years of your life
2. Environmental Benefit: Lower Carbon Footprint
Not only do you save over a year of your life while not commuting, but you also can have a good conscience about the environment if you drive 30 miles per day to work, which equates to 241,500 miles in your career.
According to Carbonfootprint.com, in the scenario above, if your commute were 30 miles per day (48 kilometers), you would increase the world’s CO2 emissions by 55.5 metric tons. So you would save 55.5 metric tons of CO2 over your career.
You may save 55.5 tons of CO2 emissions over your career.
If you still commute, you must plant five trees and have them working full-time for 40 years to absorb that amount of CO2.
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3. Decreased Commuting Costs
Not only will it save time and the environment, but you will save money, too. It costs you 60.8 cents per mile on average, according to the AAA in a 2017 report. Traveling 30 miles daily, 230 days per year over 35 years, will save you $164,200. Yes, you read it correctly. I double-checked the math on it; it’s true.
You will save $264,220 dollars over your career by not commuting
4. Decreased Chance Of A Motor Accident
According to the Federal Highway Commission, the average number of miles per car accident for the average US driver is 165,000. In our example of 30 miles per day, you would cover 241,500 miles.
This means you would avoid one car accident in your lifetime. Also, 1 in 77 car accidents is fatal, which means it is undeniably better to telecommute than to commute.
5. Health Benefits & Decreased Stress
Working from home also decreases stress in two ways. Firstly, you do not have the stress of commuting to work in the morning. Secondly, you do not encounter high stress levels in personality clashes or workplace politics.
If you need to take a break or have a power nap to refresh your mind, you can do so because you have more flexibility. No prying eyes are watching your every move and judging you like in the office. That is stress relief in itself.
6. Decreased Clothing Costs
I know it seems bizarre, but if you work in a professional environment or office with a formal dress code attire, you will also save on business clothing. As a male, I know I must have at least four suits for the office and update them yearly, plus at least ten shirts at $50 each.
With these costs, you could save $1300 per year. The savings are similar for women, as I studied my wife’s wardrobe and surmised that her looking good for work is a pricey business.
7. Improved Flexibility
One of the great benefits of working from home is that you can also do everything outside the house at off-peak Times:
- Visiting the doctor at 11 am is 15 minutes of waiting – at 5 pm, 90 minutes.
- Go Food Shopping at 9 a.m.; there will be no queue for 20 minutes. At 6 p.m., there will be long queues for 1 hour.
All appointments during the week are so efficient during working hours you can save months of wasted time, which you can make up earlier or later in the day.
8. Increased Work Presence
If you work in a team that is geographically spread across different time zones, your work presence can increase even though you are not in the office. But how is this possible?
When you work remotely in the office, you can schedule your time according to business needs. For example, my team was spread from Australia to Costa Rica everywhere. For example, my teammates in the Philippines would work much later in the day to work with me in Europe and our colleagues in the USA. If they had strictly abided by local office hours, I would have only had a few hours to work with them during my working day.
Additionally, my team in the USA would routinely start work at 6 am to catch a bigger time window with Europe and some time with Asia. They were more present across the globe than if they were in the office.
 
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9. Improved Ability To Manage Children & School
We have all been there. You are in a meeting at work, and you get a call from the school that your child is sick and needs to pick them up. It is easy when you work from home because you are close to school, but it is challenging
when you work in the city and your commute is one hour. Add to this the fact that when they are sick at home, you can check in on them regularly and still deliver your working goals.
Also, it is much easier for your child’s extracurricular activities. For example, I need to drive my daughter to the gymnastics club twice weekly and her saxophone lesson once weekly. I also take my son to his golf lessons weekly. It is all manageable when you have a flexible work-from-home regime.
10. More Family & Friends Time
If you have a family, one of the great benefits of teleworking is that you are closer to your children. I am here to make my two little ones breakfast in the morning, and when they get home, I have lunch ready for them. So, we eat at least two meals per day together. When my wife arrives home, we have dinner together. Due to my flexibility, I can work in the evenings to make up the time lost, making food and playing with my kids.
11. Time Saved Preparing For Work
You know the routine: wake up, brush your teeth, shower, shave, do your hair, select your clothes, get dressed, grab a coffee, and leave early to avoid the main rush hour. All of these activities take time. When you are a telecommuter, that time is radically reduced. You can even reduce your prep time to “wake up, brush teeth, grab a coffee.” That means unshowered, unshaven, and working in your pajamas, but each to their own.
I have read advice on other websites, such as, “For psychological reasons, prepare yourself every day like you are going into the office.” But that is wild; I will not splash on aftershave and wear a suit to work from home. At least for me, getting into work mode is as simple as firing up the laptop, logging in, and attending my first meeting.
As one of the global leaders at Hewlett Packard, I often had to present remotely at our virtual “all-employee meeting” in the US time zone. That meant being ready at 5 a.m. Here was my routine: get up at 4:30 a.m., brush my teeth, throw on shorts and a T-shirt, grab a cup of tea and coffee, log in by 4:45 a.m., and present at 5:05 a.m. Happy days, and no suit required.
12. Healthier Eating At Home
Another hidden benefit of working from home is that you do not need to eat the pig swill from the work canteen. I am English, but I live and work in Germany. I know that if you like schnitzel, sausage, bread, and potatoes, you are well looked after here in the land of sauerkraut.
I have eaten in work cafeterias in New York, Texas, Cupertino, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Singapore, Malaysia, India (that was an experience), and London, and they are all the same. Only one place had great food: the Lyon France canteen featuring red wine and Boeuf Bourguignon…
13. Lower Eating Costs
If you add up the cost of eating sub-standard food at work every lunchtime, you will see that the costs are beneficially higher than eating light and healthy at home. My average cost of canteen food was approximately $7 per day.
If you want a decent quality coffee, you are also in luck, but your wallet is out of luck: two coffees at $4 each—a potential daily cost of $13 or $260 per month.
I can throw a salad and have a coffee at home for less than $2 per day or $40 monthly.
14. A More Flexible Approach To Exercise
If you telecommute, you need to exercise. But the joy is that whenever you have a gap in your agenda, you can jump into your shorts and run for 30 minutes. Do 45 minutes of jogging, and you will hit 10,000 steps.
If you need to clear your head, go for a walk, or take your next meeting on Skype on your phone with a Bluetooth headset while walking in the sunshine. It is all possible: technology is your friend.
15. Fewer Distractions
Working from home can be a huge win if you need much of what I call “think time” in your work.
For example, let’s say you need to plan out the foundation for a huge project you have been tasked with. That takes a lot of thinking time to do it right. It would be best if you got in the zone, and when you are in the deep thinking zone, you are at your peak levels of thought and abstraction. Every time you get distracted in the office, it drags you back into the real world, you lose your train of thought, and it takes time to get productive again.
Working remotely, you can turn off instant messaging and email and explore your mind’s depths.
16. Taking A Lunchtime Shower
I already discussed the time savings in preparing for work, so now try this trick: shower in the afternoon instead of showing up in the morning. We all know that feeling. After lunch, you are settling down to get some work done, and your digestive system starts kicking in, and you start to feel sleepy. Take a shower in the afternoon, and you will be bright and breezy again as if you have just started a new day.
Take a shower in the afternoon and you are bright and breezy again like you just started a new day.
