Why Work From Home? Filipino Workers Save P300,000 and More From Hybrid Setups
These days, employees who work from home get to have the kind of work-life balance that was never afforded to them before the pandemic, not just from a well-being standpoint, but also from a financial one.
In the case of Filipino workers, they can even save upwards of P300,000 if they take on jobs on a part-time work-from-home basis, according to this tech firm report.
The published study did a double-blind survey on roughly 28,000 employees in 27 markets across all continents from January to March 2022. Entitled "Employees are ready for hybrid work, are you?," the report by Cisco highlighted why work from home benefits most employees.
It offers us a glimpse of why employees’ well-being, work-life-balance, relationships, and personal confidence have all improved as a result of the hybrid work movement. The respondents' backgrounds were diverse, as well, coming from different generations, gender orientations, and seniority.
Hybrid work is a particular job model that can be defined as a flexible arrangement that allows employees to be on a part-time work-from-home setup with occasional work at their physical workspaces.
About 29 percent of the respondents came from the Philippines. The report says that at least 60 percent of Filipino employees preferred the hybrid work setup provided by their respective companies. In terms of savings, nine out of 10 Filipino workers were said to have saved $6,552 a year or about P342,394.42 with hybrid work brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Above all, the respondents believe that these savings would last them for a long period of time.
These were the contributing factors for the large savings cited in this study:
- 90 percent of respondents chose to cut costs on fuel.
- 90 percent of respondents saved up on commuting costs.
- 76 percent of respondents saved up on expenses for food and entertainment.
Other work-from-home benefits? Interestingly, a part-time work-from-home arrangement also meant happier and more productive workers for the country. About 86 percent of respondents said that the time away from their offices improved their work-life balance.
Some of the factors for this are:
- 74 percent of respondents liked their flexible work schedules.
- 66 percent of respondents significantly reduced or completely removed commuting times.
- 37 percent of respondents said that they saved up to eight or more hours a week.
The largest time savings come from markets that have the heaviest traffic congestion in their respective regions. These, of course, includes the Philippines. In the survey, 75.7 perent of respondents in Vietnam and 74.2 percent in the Philippines each saved about four hours and more of their work hours. Indonesia workers, on the other hand, saved more than an hour.
Furthermore, the study found that 74 percent of Filipino workers saved up at least four hours per week from their hybrid work arrangements.
In the United States, corporations like Aetna and American Express have already had liberal remote policies for years. These liberal setups have only been accelerated by the pandemic in countries all over the world including the Philippines.
In another report titled "Industry Analysis of Work-from-Home Implementation During Community Quarantine" by the Institute for Labor Studies, only 62 out of 276 companies indicated that more than half of their employees could work from home or telecommute.
It also showed that at the time of its publishing last December 2021 that 34 percent of the companies in the report were either not ready to adopt the setup and were unsure if their business was feasible for these work arrangements.
Nevertheless, employers will be glad to know that 84 percent of Filipino respondents in the aforementioned Cisco study claimed that they were able to fulfill their work roles or jobs successfully even when working remotely.
