Working From Home Gets the Nod

Do you ever wonder if you should try working from home?

With so many people doing it, it kind of makes you wonder what all the fuss is about. Back in 1997, the US census reported that 9.2 million people worked from home. That number climbed to 13. 4 in 2010 and in 2015 there will be an estimated 30 million of us working from home. It’s become so popular that right now 82% of Fortune Magazine’s Best Companies to Work For already have virtual workplace policies. Harvard Business Review predicts that this year 40% of the world’s workforce will be remote…that’s 1.3 billion people worldwide.

So back to you and your decision… maybe all you need is a little nudge to prove that working from home really works. To help you make a decision, here are some interesting facts about WFH we wanted to share:

• According to a publication by Inc., most of us apparently want to work from home, as they report ‘around 8 out of 10 workers (79%) want to work from home at least part of the time’.
• Thought it was moms only? It turns out, it's not just moms who do it — the majority of telecommuters (53%) are actually men.
• The New York Times reported that WFH employees worked more than office workers — 9.5 percent longer — and were 13 percent more productive.
• Your personality matters, as a 2014 University of Calgary study found that workers who were honest, conscientious and satisfied with their jobs were productive at home, while workers who had a tendency to procrastinate were less productive.
• WFH impacts the quality of our sleep. In fact, research conducted on nearly 500 workers found that employees with a more flexible work schedule were less sleep-deficient than those with less control over their time. In other words, working from home results in employees being more rested, which may improve their productivity and engagement."Work can be a calling and inspirational, as well as a paycheck, but work should not be detrimental to health," one of the study's authors, Orfeu M. Buxton, said in a statement. "It is possible to mitigate some of the deleterious effects of work by reducing work-family conflict and improving sleep."

Whether you call it telecommuting or WFH, working from home has been a steadily growing phenomena and for many people it is the ideal work arrangement.