What is Work from Home Stipend? The Ultimate Guide

With the current pandemic, many companies had to shift to a remote work model to keep their daily activities going and maintain productivity. Because of that, other work models such as the hybrid work model became more popular, showing excellent benefits of work from home such as improving productivity and boosting your employees' well-being. However, remote working needs you to invest some money in items for your workstation, so you must learn about work from home stipends.

Having a hybrid working company lowers your expenses significantly since you don't have to spend money on building and office maintenance, but what about your employees?  Even if they don't have to spend money on gas or bus tickets, they still have to invest in a good internet service and electricity bills. It's essential to keep your employees as comfortable as they can be while working, so dive into this page to learn what a work from home stipend is and how to manage it.

What Are the Remote Working Hidden Costs?

Most people see remote working as an alternative that requires you to invest less money than office working but working from home has hidden costs that employees and employers need to consider. That happens because, while being able to work under more flexible working conditions, flexible office space and a flexible working schedule, they have to use their own money to maintain their home office and upgrade it.

To help you understand this better; here are the most common expenses that employees have to pay when remote working:

Ergonomic Products

When designing your workstation, you need to look for items that improve your productivity and prevent health problems. Sitting for long periods is detrimental to your back health, producing back pain, neck pain, and related issues, so buying office furniture bulk order is one of the first things you should do when you start remote working.

Unfortunately, ergonomic chairs and home office standing desks are more expensive than standard office products because of the advanced features and advantages they provide to their users.

Electricity Bills

It's not a secret that electricity bills represent a considerable expense at the end of the month due to how expensive they can get. Before the lock-down, you would go to your office and work there, but now that you hybrid work from home, you are using more electricity than you did before, increasing your energy bills significantly.

That's an issue that jeopardizes your productivity and mental health, making you unable to buy other stuff for your workstation because you have to save money for the energy bill.

Internet Service

Hybrid working companies need to stay in touch with their employees to assign them new tasks or give them new guidelines, so it's important to have online communication channels available for everyone in the team. However, most of those communication channels, virtual meeting platforms or team management websites require a stable internet connection to work as they should, so having a poor internet connection could damage your job performance.

To address that problem, you need to hire a better internet service, but a better internet service means a higher price. It could seem like a small investment, but when you add up the other things you need to pay, it can become an overwhelming matter.

What Is a Work from Home Stipend?

Before knowing how does a remote work stipend work, we have to understand what it is. A work-from-home stipend is basically an amount of money that employers pay to their remote employees to help them pay for work from home expenses. Many companies such as Google and Twitter started giving home office stipends when the quarantine started, encouraging other companies to do the same.

The main goal of a remote work stipend is to keep employees working and improve employee productivity, eliminating the stress of having to use your money to buy items for your workstation. Managers or business owners can give this sum of money in many ways: monthly, annually, along with their employees' salary, or in any other way that suits the company.

What Are the Benefits of a Work from Home Stipend?

As working from home provides you with excellent advantages, remote working stipends improve and boost those advantages to give you the best home office you can ask for. Giving your employees those benefits can end up being a significant improvement of your company's productivity and work quality, so here are the primary advantages that work from home stipends can give to your company:

Productivity Boost

Giving your employees work from home stipends is an investment in your company's productivity that helps your employees improve their work performance. That's because you are taking a lot of pressure off their plate while giving them the possibility to choose the items they consider necessary for their workstation. If your employees do a good job, your company's productivity increases, so do your best to keep them under a comfortable work environment.

Talent Pool Growth

Many people are looking for a job at this moment, and one of them could be the employee you are looking for. Offering remote working stipends makes your job vacancies look way better than your competitors, helping you get more and better employees and keeping yours in your company.

Are There Any Remote Work Stipend Examples?

Yes! There are many work from home stipend examples that you could analyze to learn how to apply this system in your company. It's important to know and study the enterprises that started this system and were successful, since that's the key to apply it correctly and keep growing as a company.

Naturally, every company is different and has different characteristics that require unique processes and strategies to apply this system properly. We recommend you study remote work stipends and do some tests and questions among your employees to see how they would react to that system and how they would take advantage of it.

• Google: It gave $1,000 to its employees to buy work from home equipment when the quarantine started.
• Basecamp: It didn't only provide its employees with special remote working stipends depending on the team's situation, but also offers various benefits to employees.
• Shopify: Like Google, Shopify gave $1,000 to its employees to cover any expenses related to remote working gear.

Many other companies provide their employees with work from home stipends, some of them doing this process differently than the others. To help you understand how you could do that, here are some ways of applying a remote working stipend system in your company:

• Set up an annual stipend to let your employees buy anything they need for the year.
• Set up a remote working stipend that you can pay monthly to help your employees cover their bills and other expenses each month.
• Set up a general stipend that allows a team to get specific benefits that can help them to grow together and increase their productivity.

Conclusion

The pandemic made us change the way we worked, but we can take advantage of it and transition to a hybrid work model that boosts productivity and employees’ well-being. Regardless of that, it’s highly recommendable that you provide your workers with remote working stipends to help them upgrade their home office and maintain the advantages that working from home can give your company.