Telecommuting benefits outweigh the drawbacks
Duke University conducted a research on the residents of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (L.A. Metro) employees to find out how well they were adjusting to telecommuting during the pandemic. 

Wikipedia simply explains telecommuting as follows: “also called remote working, telework, teleworking, working from home, mobile work, remote job, work from anywhere, and flexible workplace, is a work arrangement in which employees do not commute or travel to a central place of work, such as an office building, warehouse, or store.”

According to the results, most people said they were comfortable with telecommuting and would like for it to continue in the future. Interestingly, those with longer work commutes reported higher productivity at home, and those with a shorter commute reported a number of issues when it came to positive work performance.

Benefits of telecommuting
It’s not hard to understand why most people prefer telecommuting. The biggest benefit which they have observed is that telecommuting gives them more time with their family. Who doesn’t want to spend less time travelling to work? And it’s not all leisure-motivated. Most respondents also reported that their productivity at work increased. 

Statistics from the report indicate that:

• About half of employed adults are currently working from home; likely to continue at least in the near term.
• Nearly one in five chief financial officers plan to keep at least 20% of their employees working remotely after the outbreak subsides.
• Remote work options can improve job satisfaction, raise productivity, reduce emissions and improve access for those with disabilities and living in rural areas.

Organisation’s structure
A lot of respondents also said that their organisation’s support also played a massive role in their productivity while working from home. Naturally, those who perceived their organisations to be more supportive and positive about working from home reported higher productivity.

Truly unprecedented
Many organisations have chosen to sign off their emails while addressing their employees with the now dreaded and overused phrase ‘unprecedented times’. But it’s true. With the pandemic, remote work is on the rise and telecommuting, digital nomads are slowly becoming the new norm.