Work from Home Positions Offer Real Value for Employers

Between 2005 and 2015, the number of individuals working from home has increased 115%. Nine million U.S. employees, or 2.9% of the total U.S. workforce, work from home at least half of the time, up from 1.8 million in 2005.

While many employees may find working from home ideal, employers are still on the fence about converting jobs into telecommuting positions. How does hiring remote employees or converting employees to a remote workplace impact the business?

Is Your Company Work-From-Home Compatible?

Increasingly, companies are offering remote positions or sending in-office employees to an at-home environment. In fact, 56 percent of Americans currently hold a job that could be turned into a work-from-home position.

In 2015, 24 % of workers were doing some or all of their work at home, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The jobs that seem to transfer well into remote positions are those in professional, management, business, computer and technology positions plus medical billing, government, customer service, marketing, and finance.

Telecommuting isn’t for every business though. For example, if you run a construction business, there won’t be any work-from-home positions to craft up. However, if you run a business with a lot of administrative work and work done in an office, it can probably be done at home. And, work-from-home positions are almost as beneficial for the employer as they are the employee.

Perks of Having Remote Employees

In many instances, having an employee work remotely can have a significant, and positive, impact on office relations. Oftentimes having an employee work from home will decrease the number of absences, increase their productivity and save the company money. Not to mention, you are cutting out an hour or more of wasted commuting time that can be spent expanding your product and business.

Adds Kit Foreman of Strategic Performance Solutions, “I most often hear employers objecting to remote work because of concerns that the employee may not be productive for all the hours in the day. If there is an understanding of what must be accomplished in the course of a day, isn’t that much more important? Smart employers realize that by creating strong accountability for deliverables, productivity can rise – dramatically.”

Top 10 Companies Offering Work-From-Home Positions

Many successful companies have caught on to the work-from-home trend early and more are expected to join them in the coming years. Here are some of the top companies offering work from home and what kind of jobs they are converting to remote positions:

1. Appen is using its remote positions to fill part-time social media evaluators as well as remote linguistic positions. The company also offers many “flexible” positions that ask for employees to be available for anywhere from five to 40 hours per week.
2. Another great company offering work-from-home jobs is LiveOps. LiveOps has mostly technical support positions available remotely as well as call center positions, accountants and customer service support
3. You’re probably aware of the various work-from-home jobs Amazon has to offer. Amazon was one of the first companies to roll out a large number of remote positions and continue to hire individuals to do customer service work, tech support, human resources, and even architectural work from home.
4. TeleTech, as you may have guessed, is a large technology-based company, so it’s no wonder that a majority of their positions are from home. The company does a lot of its managing, sales, and even developing done remotely.
5. Teachers and tutors can work from home too. VIPKID is a great example. The company offer part-time remote online teaching positions to individuals with a Bachelor’s degree. Although it doesn’t have many positions open now, almost its current staff works from home.
6. LanguageLine Solutions found a way for interpreters to work remotely as well. Most of the open positions with the company are full-time and completely from home.
7. Working Solutions got its start in 1996 and almost immediately introduced work-from-home positions. The company has thrived on home-based customer service and sales agents.
8. Many hiring agencies also employ individuals who work from home. Kelly Services offers a wide variety of different work-from-home options, including part-time work with flexible hours to increase productivity among employees.
9. Sutherland Global Services is another established company that decided to convert some of its positions to work-from-home slots. So far, the company has converted mostly customer service positions into remote work.
10. Medical billing and other medical office work was among the first jobs to be converted into a remote position. UnitedHealth Group is almost always hiring remote workers for billing, management and other business-related medical positions.

By now, you may be thinking about converting some of the positions within your company into work-from-home jobs. After all, it seems the perks (for both the employee and employer) are well worth it. And, with more and more of the country’s most popular and successful companies deciding to do so, it may be something to consider.

What do you think about introducing remote work or the option to work-from-home for your business?