Lower expenses for the employer as well by not having to maintain a physical office, which I have to imagine is a greater per-employee saving for the company than commuting is for the individual.
> This eliminates a big chunk of fixed costs... as most are shifted to the employees
On the other hand, employees suddenly gain a lot of free time, especially those on enormous commutes. But even for small-ish commutes and 1 day/wk in the physical office the numbers are significant - at 30min one way travel, 4 days HO give you 4 h of extra time - or 10% of their workweek. Fully remote with 1h one way travel? 10 hours or over a whole work day's equivalent of time.
On top of that employees gain other positive results like saving hard money on their car / public transport ticket and, especially for introverts or people with back issues, a large uptick in life quality as they don't have to stand in overcrowded subway cars or stuck in stop-n-go traffic jams.
The fair solution would be for employers to pay a fair share of rent and decent regulations-conforming equipment (chairs!) for those working from home - and giving a raise to those who physically have to come to the office, e.g. to deal with paperwork.
The average american commutes 55 minutes each day. Assuming they work 8 hours per day, the time saved not commuting alone is roughly an 11% raise that a company can give for free. This is before one considers the real costs of commuting (fuel, wear & tear, tolls, etc) and the potential savings from lifestyle changes (living in a more affordable area, convenient access to home ammenities during working hours, etc).
On the company side, either more employees can be hired while keeping the same office space or a smaller, less expensive space can be rented. With employee commutes being less of a factor, offices can be located closer to customers or in less expensive areas depending on the business needs. Likewise the geographic area from which employees can be hired significantly increases (even if not fully remote, a several hour drive or even a flight might be acceptable if they're only coming into the office on special occasions). You even get ethically dubious perks like getting people to work when they otherwise would have called out of the office, and offloading some of the costs of operating an office onto your employees.
It takes effort and capital to set up all the infrastructure necessary for remote work, it might take a while to realize the full benefits of remote work (moving to a lower cost location is not-trivial), and of course some jobs simply can't be done remotely. But once you already have gone remote, there's no logical business case for returning to the office. You are spending more money to be in an objectively worse position, possibly literally. Companies that choose to engage in this irrational behavior will lose employees and market share to competitors who better take advantage of the opportunity.
This is already the case in the UK for employees who frequently work away from their main office - the employer is expected to pay both time and expenses for travel.
It hasn't dramatically reduced commute time for those people IMO.
Absolutely. Here’s a suggestion for employers: if you want the employees back in the office then you should pay them for the time they spend commuting. What? That’s too expensive? But didn’t you say that employees are more productive in the office? Then you’re ahead by the end of the day. Oh you can’t quantify the benefit so you can’t justify the cost? Hmmm… Have a think about what you’ve just said.
Commuting when it isn't necessary is economically inefficient. Employees are required to pay the entirety of the cost. The only way this is likely to equalize out in favor of increased time on site is if employers start paying employees extra in some way for those days that they are required to be in the office.
It's hardly surprising that a 5 minute job that requires travel to and from the customer site on your own dime costs enough to cover their travel time & costs; 20 years ago they had to read a map, plan a route to their jobs for the day, drive to and from the site.
Absolutely true, but it's worth mentioning that it does free up capital. That could go straight to a CxO's bonus, but also to larger budgets for Project X/Y/Z.
Not having to commute is also a big time saver, and that one is just on you, the worker. The Mr Money Mustache blog calculated that every mile you cut off your commute saves you like ~700-800 bucks a year.
Depending on the situation, commuting expense could be small or quite large (ie, commuting to nyc from suburbs). More difficult to quantify may be the increased energy use by home employee (so much for programmable thermostats), perhaps loss of space that must now be decicated to 'office work', extra wear and tear and cleaning needs, etc.
Someone is going to pay for that increased efficiency--either your Employer will pay in dollars, or you will pay some opportunity cost. Why should you pay?
After all, there are plenty of things that you could do in your spare time that would make you a more efficient employee. But you wouldn't let your employer tell you to work unpaid for an hour each Monday, preparing for the week. Nor would you let them require that you spend an unpaid hour of your free time reading or doing professional development each week. The only difference between those things and commuting is that we've all been conditioned (not in any nefarious way, just by the reality of work in the past) to consider a commute a hard requirement to have a job. But it's not anymore.
Remote workers don’t need to pay for commute costs to work; whether that means the family needs fewer total cars or simply fewer total miles on the same car doesn't change that it is a substantial savings.
Similarly, even if (as seems likely in most cases) childcare is still necessary, not having to do a triangle commute of home-dropoff-work and work-pickup-home reduces the likelihood of overtime costs for childcare, given a constant number of working hours.
>Make the full cost of driving salient for employees
The problem that I usually see when someone brings up this idea is that the employee's "cost" is ignored. I used to live in the Washington, D.C. area, where I could walk or take the bus to the subway. One way, the total time was 30 minutes longer than driving. Between the cost of the subway and my time, it was cheaper to drive.
For 18 years, I commuted year-round by bike, rather than drive. It took as long as the bus-subway combination from my last apartment. While it took more time, I did not have to pay for gas and my maintenance costs were minimal.
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