The popularity of telecommuting during a heavy snowfall
Posted December 8, 2016 7:57 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – When you look out the window tomorrow morning and the snow is pouring down — you may be thinking twice about venturing out into the cold to head into the office.
Telecommuting is a popular trend amongst millennials in the workforce these days giving employees the luxury of working from home. It’s a trend that was envisioned roughly 40 years ago, but never seemed to gain much traction at the time. Now it’s a far more reasonable situation in the digital age.
Major companies like Telus offer telecommuting jobs to prospective staff, and WestJet has also made the push allowing members of their call centre team to field calls from home.
In Vancouver, one local tech firm sees the benefit of his employees working from home, especially when the weather is frightful. Chris Wilson, the CEO and Founder of Function Point Productivity Software and he says it only makes sense at times like this. “When you’ve got weather like this that’s hitting us, we need to give these people the flexibility to get something done rather than sit in a car or sit on a bus.”
He adds it really comes down to trust amongst staff. For some employers, they might be skeptical of individuals taking an extended lunch break. To that — Wilson has a counter argument. “When someone is sending me a text message or communicating with us at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m., I don’t mind if there taking a longer lunch on a day they work from home.”
One study found that employers can save money having employees working from home through increased productivity, lower absenteeism and turnover. Another area is lower real estate costs which comes as a result of reduced office space.
“Some people need this from their lifestyle perspective, others are really productive from home and should be able to take advantage of that quiet time to get things done,” says Wilson. “With commutes getting longer for people to afford their own homes, the value of personal time with family and such, I fully support it.”
