Last year, Taiwan’s Ministry of Labor (MoL) issued the Occupational Safety and Health References Guidelines on Working from Home, indicating that working from home (WFH) has become a new trend work model on 23 June.
Although working from home has certain benefits, there are many difficulties in implementation. Let’s review the benefits and challenges of WFH.
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Taiwan WFH Survey reveals why people prefer WFH
In Taiwan, 104 Data invited 2,755 Taiwanese employees and 2,637 Taiwanese employers to share their thoughts on new ways of working. Among them, 37.7% of employees are or have been WFH, and 58.1% of entrepreneurs provide WFH.
Benefits of WFH in Taiwan
Based on the report, 66.1% of employees think WFH can make their time more flexible. 64.8% prefer WFH because they can sleep more without commuting. 56.5% think WFH can help them save money, such as dressing and make-up costs, meals out, transportation costs, etc.
On the other hand, 45.6% of employers believe that adopting WFH will help them save money by eliminating the need for employees to return to the office, e.g., office rent and utilities. 41.8% feel WFH helps to enhance employee self-management; 29.8% think WFH can increase employee satisfaction and help retain and recruit talent.
More importantly, both companies (82%) and employees (70%) believe that WFH improves people’s life-work balance.
Challenge of WFH implementation
Even though WFH has lots of benefits for employees and employers in Taiwan, the report shows that people still do not think it is the best solution for future work.
Misconceptions about WFH
WFH is not an employee benefit, it is one of the measures to improve work efficiency. There are still 14% of companies and 27% of workers who misunderstand WFH as a part of employee benefits.
In fact, WFH is used to meet the needs of employees and enhance their job satisfaction. It is more important to give employees flexibility in their work than just to give employees WFH.
WFH is not a no-cost work approach
Many companies think that WFH means they don’t need to rent offices or pay work allowances to employees.
In fact, you may still have some equipment that needs to be in the office. It’s wiser to evaluate office usage and space ratios before deciding whether to continue renting office space.
In addition, employees need good network support to have a good WFH experience, so employers still need to pay their network allowance.
Not suitable for all enterprises
As mentioned above, some jobs are not suitable for WFH, so you need to consider whether the job area can meet the WFH requirements.
Otherwise, it will be ineffective and a waste of time and resources to force the implementation.
Requires self-disciplined and self-motivated staff
The quality of employees is an important factor in the implementation of WFH. If your employees are passive at work, there is no way to ensure that they are as productive in WFH as they are in the office.
In addition, new employees are not suitable for WFH because they do not yet have a clear understanding of the company’s working standards. Therefore, there is no guarantee that they will know how to work on their own initiative.
Hybrid working is more suitable for Taiwanese than WFH
In summary, the 104 report shows that working from home has certain benefits, but there are many difficulties in implementation.
On the other hand, the report points out that employees and employers prefer hybrid working in Taiwan now.
The employees (65%) and the employers (29%) in Taiwan said that they changed their minds and supported hybrid work with “3 days in + 2 days of WHF” as the best solution.
What is hybrid working?
Hybrid work is an approach that combines work at home and work in the office and takes into account the needs of the individual.
It provides sufficient flexibility in work, including customized flexible working hours, workplace, and workflow by employees themselves, and allows them to work in the public workspace in the office.
As a result, employees are able to enjoy a personalized work schedule and combine it with a co-working style within the company to create an organized and efficient work model.
What setup can support a hybrid office?
A hybrid office should use a functional office management system, which helps Singapore employees use office resources efficiently, such as rooms, desks, and office equipment, and support them to have remote work and virtual meetings with their colleagues in the office.
ONES is one of the famous all-in-one smart office systems that can help you to easily implement hybrid working at ease which can easily help you to perform virtual meetings, desk hoteling, and digital office management with our Room Booking, Desk Booking, and Visitor Management feature.
Contact us: hello@ones.software, or visit ONES Software official website for more information: https://ones.software/.