Telecommuting and freelancing are gaining popularity not only because of the obvious benefits they hold for employees. Recent studies show that employees who are granted the freedom to work remotely have a significantly increased rate of productivity in comparison with office-based staff that reaches around 60% to 85% for an 8-hour work day. Aside from raising motivation and lowering employee turnover, flexibility and teleworking have some important financial benefits for businesses, like saving on annual leaves, sick days, insurance, taxes, and office expenses.
Yet, not all industry sectors can take advantage of the perks of hiring temporary staff, freelancers and running a telecommuting team. The following service types and business sectors are the ones that can benefit the most of running a telecommute-friendly business and offering a flexible work environment.
Hospitality Services
Running a hospitality business usually, includes dabbling between periods of low and high customer interest. According to a research from the International Journal of Hospitality Management, seasonality has a high impact on tourism and hospitality businesses.
Some of the factors that affect the success of hospitality businesses include seasonal changes, weather status, and local events, such as concerts, conferences, or expositions. The hospitality market shifts quickly depending on various external factors, thus, making great use of temporary staff. Whether it’s a bar, a catering business, a local cafe, or a small family hotel, the hospitality business provides a flexible work environment by offering temporary and permanent employment with part-time and full-time shifts depending on the current market conditions.
Event Management
Planning events can either be extremely busy or turn into a walk in the park depending on the current workload. Event management is another sphere that depends heavily on a series of circumstances which can lead to peaks of high and low staff demand. This business sector includes services, such as flyer distribution, event hosting, product demonstrations, and promotions which all provide a flexible work schedule and can be done by temp workers instead of in-house staff.
Household Services
This business sector has a broad market of services that tackle a variety of jobs from house cleaning and pest control to handyman, gardening, and day care. In its core, the home services sector is based largely on part-time service bookings. This means that filling your workers’ schedule completely for an 8-hour work day can sometimes be impossible and hiring temporary or part-time staff is the best option for the sector.
IT Services
Since they can be entirely performed online, almost all services in the information technology industry provide high flexibility in terms of working hours and location. The IT sector has the highest number of remotely-based staff and creates a larger market for freelancers.
Being one of the oldest sectors for freelancing, the IT industry is flooded with highly-skilled professionals ready to perform project-based tasks on a temporary contract. With B2B service platforms like Workfast, hiring on-demand staff becomes even easier. As an addition, taking advantage of the flexibility that the industry provides, businesses who tackle web and software development, graphic design, SEO services, or data entry can significantly lower the long-term company expenses of hiring permanent staff.
Online Marketing
Running an online marketing business includes offering services such as social media account management, campaign planning, brand PR, and online advertising. With the thousands of tools available online, most of the marketing can now be done remotely.
Most online promotions and marketing tasks, including social media posts and blog management, can be scheduled for a specific time. This gives companies the freedom to rely on freelancers and offer remote and part-time employment to its staff.
Customer Support
Businesses that offer customer support provide call center operation services, customer care, and live chat services. These jobs can all be performed remotely either over the phone or online.
Customer support and call-centre jobs also have a flexible schedule that doesn’t necessarily need to be a 40-hour work week. Since these services can be performed by telecommuting staff and freelancers, businesses in this sector save heavily on office space, staff insurance, special equipment, electricity, and office lunch.
