There are the pros and cons to having telecommuting in your company. It all depends upon how your company operates, the kind of work done, your company’s needs, and how telecommuting might affect your company’s finances.

The Good Side of Telecommuting

If your company happens to be located in an area where there are many months of disruptive weather, such as Buffalo, New York, where it snows a lot, you don’t want to force employees to come into work in these situations. You’ll be placing your employees in risk of getting into a car accident in the snow. This would be a liability for your company.

By letting your employees work from home, they can still get work done, especially now since meetings are usually carried out through conference calls and group video conferences anyway. There’s nothing really new here, unless your company doesn’t utilize technology as much as others out there.

Telecommuting also allows for flexibility for employees with young kids, health complications, or temporary injuries. These may be your key players that your company can’t afford to lose, even for a few months, so telecommuting lets things continue to run at full steam.

You can also keep office operating costs down through telecommuting. If your company knows that someone doesn’t regularly come into the office, then there’s no need to set up an office with a desk and supplies for that particular person. This can save your office lots of money that can be allocated to other parts of the business or the office space can be used for other employees in the office.

The Bad Side of Telecommuting

There are also employees who unfortunately try to take advantage of telecommuting. These people might pretend they’re working when they really aren’t, messing around on paid company time by going out and leaving the house during work hours. In addition, telecommuting might lead to lowered productivity for these kinds of workers, affecting the company as a whole.

In addition, there might be less synergy amongst workers as they don’t interact face-to-face as much. The interactions between employees and teams become less personal and drive down the creativity in the work environment.

If your company depends upon constant creativity and interaction amongst teams, then relying too much on telecommuting might be damaging towards your company and its work. Trying to do the same things in a conference call makes things really robotic and plain. Especially for bigger companies, there’s a high chance that even after months of working with one another, people may never have seen a face to a team member’s name. How can you really work together with someone and be productive when you’ve never had a face-to-face interaction? Aside from that, during conference calls, you won’t get to see speakers’ body language, their facial expressions, and their various reactions to things said in discussions.

Sure, a lot of these issues are alleviated through video conferences, but it still seems like there’s a barrier or wall between interactions.

Is Telecommuting for Your Company?

This all depends upon the kinds of employees you have and their track record. Can you trust them? How has their performance been in the past while working at the office? Your decision also depends upon the kind of work your company does. Is there constant interaction amongst employees needed to keep business running smoothly?

You also need to take into account how much telecommuting would be allowed to ensure that your company’s finances are still in good standing. The overall picture is to improve your company’s bottom line.