A study by the University of Melbourne suggests that remote working improves productivity and employee wellbeing.
The immediate benefits of remote working are plain to see – it means that employees sent out to other sites, or unable to reach the office for whatever reason, can still carry out the same day-to-day activities that keep the organisation ticking over.
However, if the findings of a recent Australian study are anything to go by, there could be a number of less obvious advantages to remote working into the bargain.
According to HR Report, researchers at the University of Melbourne followed 28 employees at six organisations for a three-month period. Twenty-five of these divided their time between days spent working from home and days in the office, while the remaining three worked solely on their organisations’ premises.
The study revealed that interruptions affected the remote workers far less frequently than their counterparts in the office, with the latter individuals losing between 30 minutes and three hours of each working day to unrelated distractions. The remote workers, meanwhile, experienced "minimal to no interruptions".
Correspondingly, the researchers also found that working from home appeared to result in a substantial improvement to each employees’ productivity. The remote workers managed between one-and-a-half and three hours’ more work every day than their office-bound counterparts.
One participant said: "Without question I am more productive when I telework. There is no need to commute to the office every day, so on telework days I actually get more work done."
However, that’s not to say that the remote workers didn’t also see the value of splitting their time between the office and elsewhere. According to co-author Rachel Bosua, 99 per cent of workers indicated they preferred to commute a few days per week than spend every day out of the office.
Altogether, the study demonstrates that flexible working arrangements could help organisations achieve substantial improvements to productivity.
However, remote working can be difficult if business-critical information isn’t available in the cloud. If your organisation relies on paperwork, facilitating an employee working from out of the office can be hugely impractical.
To make the first step towards digitising your data, why not call Dajon today to discuss our document scanning services?