Telecommuting is a great benefit to offer staff members in IT and the rest of the company. But for telecommuters to stay productive, companies need to invest in some software and other items. 

Overall companies find telecommuting to be beneficial. It’s a benefit organizations can offer to employees in many jobs without adding much cost, and the arrangement often leads to a happier and more productive workforce.

One recent telecommuting survey, from Teamviewer.com,  found that 50% of telecommuters feel that they’re more productive working from home, with 23% even saying that they are much more productive.

Most (80%) of Americans say that saving money on gas and having no daily commute are the biggest benefits of telecommuting. The money and time saved can be significant for a lot of people — 45% of American telecommuters said they cut between 21 and 50 travel miles per day.

Top telecommuting benefits for employees

Aside from saving time, gas and traffic-related frustration, employees reported several benefits of working from home, including:

• Better work/life balance (cited by 53% of respondents)
• Less stress/better health (52%)
• The ability to complete household chores (e.g., laundry) while working (50%)
• The chance to get away from office gossip (38%), and
• The opportunity to be near children during the workday (25%).

The bottom line: More employees are going to start asking to work from home, and employers will be wise to consider it.

But for the arrangement to work, companies can’t just send employees home and wait for them to be productive. It’s important to pick and choose which departments, job roles and employees are best suited to telecommute.

And the company’s IT department will need to supply some necessary tools for telecommuting workers to be successful. Here are the main things survey respondents said they expect from their employers when they telecommute:

• Remote control of their work computer (45%)
• Mobile access to their files both at work and at home (43%)
• Participation in office meetings as if in the same room (40%)
• Remote printing (40%)
• Ability to work on a document through screen-sharing (38%), and
• Face to face video communication with colleagues and clients (37%).

Tags: productivity, telecommuters, work from home