You Could Save Your Company Over $10K A Year By Doing This
If you’re currently working in an office and wondering how to get a work-from-home job, you may need to get savvy with making compelling arguments to your manager. How do you convince them that you should be able to work remotely?
Naturally, you may gravitate toward spending a lot of time preparing yourself to explain how you can work just as productively in your home office and deliver the same results while telecommuting. You may want to try to convince your manager that reducing your commute saves time which you can then funnel in your actual work. Or you may simply argue that you will have to be available and accessible digitally through email, video conferencing technology or a group messaging system like Facebook at Work or Slack.
One tactic you may take comes from a different perspective: that of your employer. What benefit does your employer receive if you are able to work from home? Real estate savings can seriously add up and may be the argument that pushes your employer over the edge.
Assuming that the average employee takes up 200 square feet of real estate, The Square Foot has calculated that you may be saving your employer up to $14,800 a year, simply by working from home. Commercial real estate costs vary by location, of course but in expensive cities such as New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C., the savings to an employer can really add up. In each of those cities, an employer would save over $10,000 per year for every employee who is allowed to work 100% remotely.
For those employers whom you’re simply trying to convince to let you work remotely some of the time, you might want to team up with a colleague who also wants to work from home. If you can come to an arrangement where you swap days (e.g. you work Mondays and Wednesdays whereas your co-worker works Tuesdays and Thursdays), then you get the savings of one full-time desk area without having to give up on your in-office experience entirely.
When you know your employer is cost-sensitive, pointing out the real estate cost savings to them could help you land your telecommuting job -- and be a win-win for all.
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