Home › News › Oct 2017

Companies That Support Remote Work Experience 25% Lower Employee Turnover

Staff Report

Friday, October 6th, 2017

Owl Labs and TINYPulse released the 2017 State of Remote Work report. The State of Remote Work is one of the first reports of its kind to analyze remote work's impact on employee success and retention as well as manager-employee relationships. It is based on the survey responses of 1,097 US-based workers.

Notably, the survey found that companies that allow remote work experience 25 percent lower employee turnover than companies that don't support remote work. This data indicates a key opportunity for employers to expand their remote and flexible work offerings as a retention tool.

In fact, when surveying employees who don't work remotely, 65 percent said they would like to work outside of the office at least once a month. Of the employees who didn't express the desire to work remotely, 57 percent said the nature of their job would not allow it. For employers, this signals an opportunity to adjust roles and responsibilities in order to allow occasional flexibility. Even basic changes could lead to an increase in employee retention, as 51 percent of employees who work remotely today do so to improve their work/life balance.

Another key finding was that fully-distributed companies, or companies with no corporate headquarters, can hire 33 percent faster than other companies. This data indicates that by removing geographical limitations, a company can more effectively expand its candidate pool and thus find individuals with the most applicable skills and experience faster.

Not all findings were positive, however, as some statistics revealed that remote workers do not receive the same career and management support as their on-site colleagues. For example, remote employees with managers who work on site have 25 percent fewer career growth discussions than average. This suggests that managers may subconsciously rely on visual and in-office cues to trigger these important conversations, and therefore remote employees are less likely to receive the support required for their success.

Other findings included:

  • Small companies are two times more likely to hire full-time, remote employees.

  • Individual contributors work from home 38 percent more often than management.

  • Managers see equal performance between their on-site and remote employees.

  • Managers of distributed teams say their biggest challenge is cultivating strong company culture.