More companies are giving people the chance to work remotely, or, in other words, the ability to work outside of the office.

Since 2007, there has been a 157% rise in remote working in the US and by the end of 2020, 50% of the UK workforce will work remotely, in some capacity. So what exactly are the benefits?

Many factors contribute to its rise, from the emergence of management tools that facilitate remote work to changes in attitude towards the way we work.

But how exactly can remote work be economically beneficial for companies and countries across the world?

Companies that allow remote working have 25% less turnover rate than those that do not 🔅

Companies have it in their best interest to keep their people happy, especially within a highly competitive environment.

Finding people for midrange positions can cost up to 20% of the total salary in direct costs (e.g. for example, it costs $8000 to find a person with a salary of $20000), and this does not even account the cost of onboarding and lost productivity.

Check out this graph below that shows the economic value over time of an employee.

Source: Bersin by Deloitte

The process of onboarding new hires takes time and money. In fact, companies can expect to lose money over new hires throughout the onboarding process, and this breaks even when they find their place and master the processes they’re responsible of.

Remote working could lead to $2.3 trillion in annual national economic growth by opening more opportunities to work 📈

A study by Centre for Economics and Business Research and Citrix indicates that the US economy could gain more than $2.3 trillion annually if people were given the chance to work remotely.

In this survey of 2500 respondents, 69% of those unemployed or economically inactive indicated that they start to work if they can do it remotely or flexibly.

Flexible work conditions, which includes remote working, could open more opportunities to people, who’ve felt previously excluded in the job market, from home-makers to disabled people.

Remote work allows access to an ever-increasing diverse pool of talent 💡

Remote working removes the friction of geography, where companies have a hard time finding qualified people, because of stiff local competition. This is a no-brainer. Hiring for remote work means that you can target the whole country, instead of, say, your local region.

Remote work leads to less operational costs related to onsite conditions

Remote work also cuts the costs relating to hiring onsite, from relocation costs of people hired abroad to office space.

Remote work can also lead to lower salary expectations. A survey from Owl Labs – a video conferencing tool – indicates that 37% of people would consider a pay cut to work remotely. And, of course, tapping into a bigger workforce also means that you can attract people from less expensive regions to work

Remote work generally leads to happier, more productive people 🌇

Generally, remote workers have 105 hours more free time than their onsite counterparts. That is the equivalent of 13 workdays! This allows people to have more time to do personal matters or enjoy life, in general. Within a purely economic viewpoint, more free time leads to more consumption.

Alongside this, a 2014 PGi survey finds that 82% of employees are less stressed when working from home. Remote workers are also able to better organize their time, because they’re away from office distractions.

Remote working can help solve the problem of human capital flight 🌬️

Of course, within a hypothetical society that’s remote-first, rush-hour congestions wouldn’t exist, because the norm would be to work from home or within proximity (for the sake of this thought experiment, let’s assume that people wouldn’t travel 1-2 hour commutes just to find a place they want to work at).

Even further than that, because remote workers wouldn’t need to be in a physical location to work, they don’t need to stay in the bustling capital to find fresh opportunities to further their career.

Right now, countries everywhere are experiencing a brain drain problem whereby talent goes to cities or migrates abroad in order to seek better opportunities. This has led to places and provinces that don’t have enough people for certain jobs. At the same time, in major cities, companies are having to go through hundreds and hundreds of qualified candidates, only to hire one single person.

Of course, the surplus of talent in metropolitan places and deficit in more rural ones leads to an inefficiency in the labor market – something that a remote-first structure can fix. Skilled locals who don’t want to leave their regions wouldn’t feel the need to, because they can just work anywhere.

Is the future of work remote-first? ✨

Is remote the future of work? That’s open for debate, because remote working conditions affect different types of people and jobs.

But there’s a strong economic case for companies and cities to encourage remote work. Companies who are able to effectively operationalise this can see a competitive edge to those that don’t.



Giving people the choice on where and how to work improves their work-life balance and enables companies to hire the best talent for the role, regardless of the location. An effective remote-first leads to teams that are strong in trust and collaboration, and are able to work anywhere around the world.

And of course, companies can always benefit from teams that can work anywhere.



