With vaccination over 60% [Mayo clinic link, per state] in most states of the US, many Business Owners are considering whether to go back to normal operations or keep home office practices.

More than a half of US employees answered they would prefer to work from home, even taking a 5% hit on their wages.

Why? Let’s make a thought exercise:

• The average daily commute is between 40–60 min, depending on the city, both ways. Equivalent to 14 to 21 hours each month spent on the road, considering a 21-working-day month. Considering the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hr), this could represent up to $100–150 per week equivalent income for workers.
• Add to this the cost of transportation, whether that’s public or private, and the possibility of a traffic jam delaying early work in the morning.
• Taking the average book word count (90,000) and the average reading speed (250 words/minute), one could read a book in 6 hours, about a third to half of the freed time by not commuting to work daily. Within a year, we’re talking about up to 50 books read to improve the employee’s performance and capacity.
• Most office tools and functions are going completely remote (and some for free!), and for sure, nobody wants to miss the trend. Some examples are:
• Written tools help to keep track & audit tasks
• File sharing apps help you to centralize and coordinate resources
• Zoom meetings are nowadays as common as a text message
• Online presence is a must to showcase your products

While many jobs require the employee to be present and complete operations, numerous office jobs can be done online and allow full or partial home office. This can improve the relationship with employees that prefer to work from home and, maybe, give them a chance to improve their abilities, increasing your business’ productivity.

As a Business person you may consider one of the following options:

• Go back to normal operations
• Keep the home office workflow
• Agree with your employees a partial home office schedule

All of that sounds fine, but where are the financial benefits? According to Lucid char, the relaxation provided by working from home helps to boost the worker’s productivity (who wouldn’t, if you can avoid 40 mins of daily traffic before even getting to your office?)

Take a look at your Income Statement and ask yourself: if I could improve 5% percent, where would I invest the extra returns? At IOOGO, we suggest consulting our experienced CFO (Chief Financial Officer) to get to know the best way to increase your ROI! Write us and Schedule a Free Consultation to know if that’s the right fit for your business needs.