Should You Allow Telecommuting?

I think I’d always make remote work an option for a company I owned, but should you? What if you’ve never worked remotely yourself, or if you have some concerns?

Ultimately you have to trust your employees. They have access to your data, your equipment, etc. They can find ways to waste time at work, and some of them will end up wasting more time at work than they would at home.

Implement a pilot program, test out different jobs, and with different people. Let them know this is a privilege that can be revoked, and see if their work improves or declines. You don’t need fancy auditing, or monitoring, or anything more than you have now. Either they get work done or they don’t.

If they do, you might be able to vastly reduce the costs you bear in maintaining a large office space. You might even be able to hire new people at lower salaries by giving them the option to work remotely.