Should You Let Your Employees Work From Home? The Benefits Of Remote Working

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Today, we’re sharing with you the first part of our series: Should You Let Your Employees Work From Home? This series will explore the benefits of remote working (and the negatives) to help you assess whether remote workers may be the right thing for your business.

In the same style as our series about Open Offices – The Benefits Of Open Offices and The Negatives Of Open Offices – we will be writing two posts about remote working. This week’s edition is about the pros of working from home; don’t forget to return next week to learn about the negatives.

Quick summary of the BEST benefits of allowing your employees to work from home

  • Increased employee retention – employees are more satisfied with their jobs and so less likely to leave.
  • Lower running costs – businesses don’t need to pay for office space, commuting costs or office running costs (bills) for remote workers.
  • Larger talent pool – if you aren’t limited by location, you can scout the best talent from all over the world.
  • Increased employee productivity – results from employees and businesses alike have shown that employees who work from home are actually more productive.

Pros Of Working From Home

In recent years, the popularity of flexible working has risen exponentially.

In 2015, 23 percent of employees reported doing some of their work remotely

Working from home (or, as the dream goes, from a beach in the Maldives) is not just a feature of a dream job. It’s a real, tangible possibility – and it’s fast becoming commonplace. With advances in technology making it easier and easier to work remotely, more people are wanting it – and more businesses are offering it.

80% to 90% of the US workforce says they would like to work remotely at least part time.

However, is working from home just a fad? A trendy new way to attract millennial talent? Let’s take a look.

Flexibility

One of the largest benefits of remote working is the ability to be truly flexible, with both time and location. You can work from wherever, whenever is convenient for you (permitting the hours get done).

This is beneficial from a productivity perspective as some people work better at different times of day. Night-owls may do their best work long after most people have gone to sleep – and early-risers may want to take full advantage of the morning hours.

“Night-owls” and “early-risers” aren’t just character traits. Did you know that night-owls and early-risers actually have different brain structures?

Working from home allows employees to work at whatever time they perform best.

However, the flexibility of working from home is also a large benefit of remote working because it allows employees to fit work around their life – without losing work time. If an office-based employee has an appointment, they have to take off office time. In comparison, a home-based employee has an appointment, they can just move their hours around.

Improves employee satisfaction

Allowing your workers to work remotely actually increases employee satisfaction – studies have shown that remote workers are happier than their counterparts. Keeping employees satisfied is essential for retention. Plus, happier workers produce better work!

When managed correctly, improves work-life balance

There is a potential downside to working from home (from an employee perspective, at least) in that working from home can make it easier for employees to overwork. When workers are sat in the comfort of their own home, it’s easier to work extra hours – or to “just finish off this project” and end up working into the night.

However, remote working can improve the work-life balance. This ties in with the point about flexibility; if your employees need to take time for their personal lives, they can. A better work/life balance means better health and happiness – both of which mean better work.

Employees are willing to work longer hours

As previously mentioned, it can be easy for employees to overwork themselves when working from home – however, this can be beneficial if you want to contract them for longer hours.

Remote workers are usually willing to work longer hours as they are doing so from the comfort of their home.

Less sick days

Did you know that there are 64% less absent days taken from remote workers?

Think about most sick days you need to take – if your office were your home, would you be able to work? Probably. A lot of the time taking a sick day is about preventing the illness from getting worse; commuting and being around people all day are not going to help you get over a bug.

However, with remote workers, they don’t have to get up and leave their house to work – so they’re often still willing to work from home.

Saved money on transport costs

When you work in an office, you spend not only time but money on your daily commute.

If you’re one of the employers that covers your employee’s commuting costs, you can save money by allowing them to work remotely.

Good for the environment

Remember how remote workers don’t need to commute? That saves pollution caused by transport!

Saved office running costs

Running an office is expensive. If your entire workforce is office based, you’re going to be paying extra for office space, electricity and facilities – not to mention office furniture. As an employer, one of the largest benefits of remote working is that you can save money by not needing to spend it on people being in the office.

 

Most remote workers find they work more productively from home

Arguably the most notable benefit of remote working: most employees work better from home. 

Employers tend to be mistrusting of remote working – how will you monitor your employees? How do you make sure they don’t slack off? Workers will get distracted at home – nothing will get done!

Those ideas couldn’t be further from the truth. Studies have shown that most people who work from home are more productive. In fact, 91% of remote workers consider themselves to be more productive than they were in the office.

Reduces employee stress

Imagine a workday where you didn’t have to get up and dressed at the crack of dawn to endure a long commute; where you didn’t have to leave the warmth of your home. Where you can work in the exact conditions you want. Doesn’t it sound stress-free?

82% of remote workers reported lower stress levels.

Allowing your employees to work from home significantly lowers their stress levels; in turn, this increases their happiness, productivity and job satisfaction. Big win? We think so.

Gives you a wider choice of candidates

When you are open to recruiting remote workers, your talent pool widens massively. You can hire people from anywhere in the world – if the perfect candidate lives in Australia, it’s no longer an issue.

We hope this article was informative and opened your eyes to some of the benefits of working from home.

How To Manage A Multi-Generational Workforce – Understanding Generations In The Workforce

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With Generation Z just starting to breach the workforce, our offices are now hosting four generations. The baby boomers (1946 – 1964), Generation X (1961 – 1981), the millennials (1981-1996) and Gen Z (late 90’s to early 2000’s). Each generation has different values, different interests and different strengths – especially in the workplace. However, this can present a unique challenge:

How do you manage multiple generations in one office?

Generational Stereotypes.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines stereotype as “a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing.” When talking about different generations in this post, we have used a lot of stereotypes. Use them as inspiration, but don’t take them as law.

The Issue: Generational Tension

One of the largest problems your office is going to face when hosting four or five generations under the same roof is generational tension. Generational tension is loosely defined as a lack of respect for someone who’s of a different generation from you. Typical examples of this may be:

“These millennials have no work ethic!”

“Baby boomers are stubborn and outdated!”

Tension can come from conflicting values and experience. Each generation will have different perspectives and so can interpret each other negatively. If you’re from a generation that highly values a strong work ethic, the generation that refuses to work any longer than their contracted hours and wants loads of vacation time seem lazy. However, if you’re from a generation that cares about having a healthy work/life balance, the generation that thinks you should stay late and be willing to work weekends seems stodgy and demanding.

Needless to say, this friction is not something you want appearing in your office.

The Difference Between Age Gap and Generation Gap and Why It’s Important

It’s important to distinguish between age differences and generation differences.

Generations, as they are commonly understood nowadays, are social generations. Social generations are defined as cohorts of people born in the same date range and who share similar cultural experiences.

The importance in this definition is the shared cultural experiences. Each generation lives through different periods of history and develops their values from said events.

For example:

“Generation X” were born in a time where they were seeing their parents being laid off and jobs being cut, as well as being the first generation to be told they wouldn’t do as financially well as their parents. These experiences are said to have made them self-reliant and disloyal to organisations.

Each generations’ experiences are different to those that came before and after them. This results in different values and outlooks on life, which is where the different generations can then clash.

How to manage multiple generations in the office

Disregard Stereotypes

There is a wealth of information available online about different generations and their various traits. The first thing you should do when managing multiple generations in the workplace is disregard those stereotypes. Half of them are likely wrong anyway.

Don’t assume all your older workers are technologically illiterate. Don’t assume all your younger ones are lazy.

Treat all of your employees like individuals

Painting your employees with the same brush is a quick way to make that age gap more pronounced – and to upset your employees.

There may be some truth in certain generational traits. However, it’s important to remember that stereotypes are never entirely accurate. It’s perfectly reasonable to take generational needs into account when making decisions, but make sure that you aren’t treating people differently based off of them.

Besides, if you start to stereotype generations in the workplace – what stops employees from stereotyping each other?

Understand what each generation wants and needs

Due to growing up in different times, with different events and concerns, each generation tends to have different values.  They also have different working requirements and expectations. This isn’t to say that an individual employee may not go against what their generation is touted to value, but that it can definitely help you when accommodating different age groups.

Understanding where your employees’ wants and needs stem from can help you form a more complete and tolerant understanding of them. As an example, a word often used to describe millennials are “entitled”, “self-obsessed” and “lazy”. An alternative interpretation, however, is that millennials are really more focused on having the work/life balance their parents didn’t have.

Think about how different those two perspectives are. As a manager, having a lazy, difficult employee is far different to having an employee who wants to be home to feed their children.

This works for all generations. With a little understanding, most negative stereotypes have no purchase.

Most employees you hire are not going to be intrinsically disagreeable. If you can understand their perspective and what drives them, you’ll be able to resolve conflict more efficiently.

Understand each generation’s strengths – and weaknesses

One of the biggest benefits to having such a diverse workforce is the variety of skills and life experience your office is home to. Certain generations will have skills that others don’t and other generations will have experience that others don’t. If you can understand each generation, you can utilise your entire workforce to create a complete solution.

A noteworthy idea that some businesses encourage is for employees with generational gaps to mentor and learn skills from one another. This helps to bridge skills, improve employee bonds and lessen generational tension.

Support each generation

Another way to ensure your office runs smoothly is to support employees while they work for you. This isn’t to say that you need to give employees special treatment. Sometimes simple acknowledgement is enough. Understanding that certain tasks may be easier or harder; working styles could differ; benefits for one person may not be the same for another.

These are just a few ways that you can ensure that your office is ready to be hosting five different generations as smoothly as possible.

*Image credit: https://careeremployer.com/

Is it time to review your ‘office supplies’ provider? 10 Things to help save on your office running costs

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Is it time to review your ‘office supplies’ provider?

Employers are constantly looking for ways to run more efficiently and minimise overheads and running costs – so have you looked at your office supplies budget recently? Reliable office supplies providers should be helping you save money and finding solutions tailored to your needs. Today, we’re going to explain a few small changes you can make that have the potential to save you a significant amount of money.

If you are looking to optimise your office and ensure it’s running as cost-efficiently as possible, feel free to contact us for further help and information.
10 things to consider when it’s time to save money and review your office supplies provider . . .

1. Consolidating the products the business orders

Firstly: does your office supplies provider offer you the option to consolidate all of your orders? Or are you paying for delivery of ten different products from 10 different vendors?

If it’s the latter, you might want a change. Not only is this inefficient for your business’s carbon footprint, but the cost of all these deliveries can quickly add up. (Plus the time your employees will spend unpacking and putting away the products.) Your office supplies provider should suggest weekly or monthly ordering. On top of this, you can also consolidate orders so that you receive them together in one delivery.

2. Invoicing

While not something that immediately springs to mind for many businesses, your invoices may be costing more than you think. The cost to process an invoice is typically £15; simply implementing monthly invoicing will save your business time and money. These savings are known as ‘soft costs’.

Using an office supplier that will consolidate your purchases and invoice you as infrequently as possible can save your business money.

3. Own brand or branded supplies

Although having branded office supplies can sometimes seem like a necessity, is that really always the case? Non-branded products do the job at a fraction of the cost. Your office could potentially be spending a lot of extra money on supplies simply because they have a brand name.

4. Branded Promotional Products

Adding your company logo to promotional gifts like pens, USBs, umbrellas or drinks flasks is a great way to showcase your company brand. But are you paying over the odds with a provider that you have no relationship with? Certain suppliers may not guide you through the process – leaving you open to possible pitfalls.

5. Making your online ordering system work for you

In the age of technology, most purchasing is done online – but are you getting the most out of your online ordering system? While this post can’t tell you what advantages your online ordering system has, it is worth contacting your office supplies provider and enquiring about the ways in which their system can benefit you.

At Quills our online ordering system offers a range of additional services that can help you to shop and save efficiently:

  • A pre-agreed ‘contract list’ will be online showing your employees which products your business uses the most and these items have special contract pricing applied to them
  • ‘Fast Order’ does just that and allows employees the ability to easily purchase the products they buy the most simply by adding the quantity next to the item code and it will drop in the shopping cart
  • Authorise – There is the option to set up ‘authorisers’ who can accept, amend or decline an order placed by a ‘user’; again, this is a service that allows you to monitor all of your outgoing costs and, more importantly, control them
  • Orders can be raised against individual cost centers; this enables you to track how much each branch/department is spending and on what. When running an office with multiple departments, being able to track the expenditure of each department is incredibly useful for identifying potential problems and where budgeting needs to be more strictly applied
  • A detailed monthly management report can be provided, which will highlight what each location and cost center has spent on a monthly and year-to-date basis. This negates the need for your management accounts department to calculate and re-charge costs which saves the business time and money

6. Print

In addition to the above, printing is a common office cost.

Most businesses will require some form of printing, whether this is reports, brochures, business cards or promotional flyers. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that you’re managing your print costs properly. It’s often surprising to find out how much money your business could be saving on print; often, this is not something businesses can accurately tackle in-house. Due to this, it may be worth getting a free, third-party audit from us here at Quills.

7. Managed Print Services (MPS)

While a lot of offices are moving to a more paper-less environment, the typical workplace still uses print. Managed Print Services (MPS) have the ability to significantly lower your office’s running costs by optimising your usage of printing systems.

Managed print systems offer functionalities such as:

  • Forcing duplex (double-sided) printing to reduce paper wastage and therefore paper costs
  • Restricting use of colour printing; businesses have the option to restrict colour printing from specific document types such as emails and accounting
  • Follow me print solutions that increase productivity, promote security and reduce waste. A pin number has to be added to retrieve your print job at your nearest printers and your job will be retrieved and printed when you’re ready
  • Tracking and reporting that allows you to monitor your business’s printing habits and identify any necessary changes.
  • Free software can be installed to monitor ink levels. At a certain level a notification email will be sent to your stationery supplier to confirm that a toner / ink cartridge is running low and needs ordering. This also means there’s no need to store multiple toners because your system will notify you when the time is right to order.

8. Can your office supplier stock larger items on your behalf?

Office space comes at a premium, so it might be worth considering relocating items you buy in bulk with your office supplies provider. This not only frees up your office space, but it’s also more cost-efficient as storage space is far cheaper than office space.

9. Waste Management

A likely overlooked aspect of running an office is what to do about waste. Managing your waste ethically and safely is essential for your business. Correct waste removal not only ensures that data is securely disposed of, but also helps towards your environmental policy.

Quills provide the following:

  • Commercial Waste Management and Recycling
  • Confidential Shredding and Secure Data Destruction
  • Medical and Clinical Waste Management
  • Offensive Hygiene Waste Removal
  • Hazardous Waste Removal
  • Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

10. Can your office supplies provider provide archiving services?

Whilst being environmentally friendly is an important goal for businesses to work towards and technology is largely available to help minimise paper wastage, paper in the workplace is by no means obsolete. As a business, you probably have more important things to prioritise than your documentation – especially when it’s relating to organising storage in the office.

The importance of archiving and documentation is not just short term, however; you can save money in the long term (legal fees and fines, for example) by keeping your documents safely accessible in the event that you need to use them as evidence in audits etc.

Quills offer a comprehensive range of archiving solutions:

  • Workflow, EDRM, digitisation and scan back
  • Storage of files and boxes
  • Storing of wills, deeds and original documents
  • Storage of digital media
  • Consultancy including best practices, Record Management policies and retention policies
  • Special projects including inventory, purging, back scanning, filing audits, filing relocations and rationalisation
  • Nationwide coverage offering same day/next working day delivery

11. Order office supplies in bulk

Hopefully, this post offered insight into some of the key ways that you can minimise your office’s running costs.

Quills Group is a dedicated office management solutions provider that spans seven product and service sectors – all under one supplier. We offer a variety of services from office furniture to waste management, with a strong focus on ethical and transparent business practices.

Our free, no-obligation audit is there to help identify areas where improvements can be made in your purchasing practises across any of the sectors mentioned above and more:

  • Multiple suppliers and invoices: We supply services and products from seven different sectors; with Quills, it will be one invoice and one delivery
  • Own branded supplies: We can provide a quotation on a like for like basis, where we will incorporate some non-branded goods so that you can decide what is right for your business
  • Print management: If you are interested in managing your printing more efficiently, Quills offer a free audit of your current expenditure. Furthermore, in this audit we will highlight where cost savings are available
  • Storing larger products on your behalf: Quills offer this service; we provide regular stock level reports on these items stocked on your behalf. This ensures you never run out of those important items and frees up valuable space in your office.

If you’d like a free audit to see where your office could make significant savings, feel free to contact us:

Request an audit!

Call: 0845 078 0324   Email: sales@quillsuk.co.uk   Live chat: www.quillsuk.co.uk

Keeping cool in the office

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So how does the heat affect the productivity in the workplace?

Take a look at this info graphic to find out.

Keep cool with our range of fans this Summer.

Quills Group Office Solutions Celebrates 20th Anniversary

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Quills Group celebrated it’s 20th Anniversary this month and Managing Director Andy Efstathiou was stumped for words when the team surprised him with a mini celebration to mark the event.

This is a fantastic achievement given that Quills UK began trading from Andy’s parents front room, then to a  garage converted into an office and then to a number of small business premises and to our head office premises at Spitfire Business Park.

Congratulations to Andy, the senior leadership team and all Quills employees for helping Quills reach this fantastic milestone of 20 years.

 

 

Aaron Fairman

New Line Learning Academy student joins Quills Group for work experience

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Aaron has joined the Quills Group team this week to undertake a weeks’ work experience.

Before arriving at Quills Aaron’s objective for his placement was to understand how a business operates and in particular the financial side of the company, including the systems used on a day to day basis.

So far Aaron has had a full rundown on the company from Andy Efstathiou, Managing Director, managed product updates, edited web copy, published a web article, delivered and built some chairs and spent the day with one of the Quills drivers George.

Aaron said, “I have found this experience very enjoyable and I love how friendly and understanding all of the staff have been since I arrived on Monday.  I’ve enjoyed understanding the full process of an order being received right through to the point of delivery. I was really keen to see how all of the financial data was logged onto the Quills back-office system and I feel I have a good understanding of this now. The not so good part for me was being out on the road assisting with deliveries when it was unusually hot for the UK and reached over 30 degrees!

Quills welcome Inteb Managed Services Ltd

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Quills are delighted to be a preferred partner of  Inteb Managed Services Ltd.  Inteb is a company of energy managers, surveyors, utility and environmental specialists serving a wide range of real estate clients in both public and private sectors. In summary, their service helps:

  • Lower energy consumption and carbon emissions
  • Save money
  • Stay compliant
  • Enhance reputation
  • Engage tenants and stakeholders
  • Raise property values

We look forward to working with Inteb Managed Services and providing sustainable pricing solutions for their office products.