• Reduced office space needs. If your company is outgrowing its existing office space faster than you anticipated, you may be able to hold off on yet another office move by letting some of your employees work from home. Without a need to supply office or cubicle space to every single employee, you may be able to keep lease costs down and eliminate the headache of moving the entire company elsewhere. If you want your telecommuting employees to come into the office at least a couple of days a week, you could set up shared office space and arrange for the office mates to come in on different days or at different times.
• Less tardiness and fewer early departures. With no commuting headaches to deal with, employees can be at work on time everyday and ready to work right at starting time. And if they have evening plans, they won’t necessarily have to leave early to “beat the traffic”.
• Better rested and more productive employees. Again, with no commute, employees can sleep later and eliminate the inevitable stress that comes with fighting rush hour traffic, making them less stressed and more productive.
• Less office gossip. With employees physically isolated from their co-workers, they are less likely to sit around gossiping or goofing off with each other while they should be working.
• Larger pool of qualified job applicants. Many times the perfect employee to fill an open position is one who lives out of the geographic area and is unable to move closer. By opening up telecommuting possibilities, you are opening up a much wider range of qualified applicants, enabling you to build a higher calibre team of employees who can grow your business. This can be especially important if your company is located in a smaller town or more rural area where finding qualified employees is difficult.
• Flex-time arrangements can lead to fewer absences. Allowing a telecommuting option also opens up the possibility of some flex-time arrangements for certain employees. While it may not be possible for all jobs or as an everyday thing, there are certainly some jobs where it doesn’t matter what time of day the work gets done, as long as it gets done. If your telecommuting employees have a sick child or a doctor’s appointment, and they also have flexible work hours, they may be able to get in their full 8 hours by working around the childcare or appointment issue. Without the flex time / telecommute option, they might have to just take a personal day. Being allowed to work at home with flexible hours, allows people to work during the night if necessary, something that isn’t necessarily possible if they have to come into the office.

So, as you can see, companies that allow some telecommuting options, even if just on a part-time basis, often end up with happier and more productive employees with fewer absences and other distractions. Obviously some jobs cannot be done at home, and some jobs can but only with some additional costs and security measures which would have to be taken into consideration too. However, it’s worth it to explore the possibilities, especially if a valued employee approaches you with the suggestion.

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One of the places where I get some freelance writing work is called Demand Studios. They have a ton of writing work available if you are accepted as a writer. The pay varies from $3 to $20 per writing piece with most paying either $7.50 for 150-200 words or $15 for 400-500 words. The editors are picky. You have to do research for these articles and you have to write well. And even when you do those things, you still may get an editor that doesn’t like your work and either rejects it outright or makes you do revisions.

But if you can handle the critiques and can get efficient with your research and writing, you can make decent money. Some people work there full time and make $3000 a month or more. They are also getting ready to offer health insurance to freelancers who’ve average 30 articles a month for the last 3 months. I don’t have details about it yet, but it sounds like a good deal.

They are also hiring Copy Editors and Film Makers at the time of this blog post. But Copy Editors have to have significant professional editing experience. And I think Film Makers do too. If you want to write, you will need some writing samples and a resume. Make sure your resume highlights your writing experience, even if it was just something you did occasionally at your last day job.

There are certainly critics of Demand Studios and many of their complaints are valid. I don’t like everything about them either. But I’m glad to have them available to me for some extra money each month. No job is perfect. But this is not a terrible way to make some cash.

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