Hoping for a raise in 2021?: Just keep working from home
How working from home is equivalent to getting a $5k - $10k raise
Lean housekeeping
The first vaccines are being delivered. What a wonderful moment for the world! However, we are not out of the woods yet, so please do not let your guard down when the end is so near.
It must be said: Please, take the vaccine as soon as it’s your turn to do so. There are small side-effects like any inoculation, but they do not compare in any way to losing hundreds of thousands of lives every month, as we are now. And do not spread misinformation about the vaccines. They are safe, have been rigorously tested and the scientific community stands behind them.
While this year was a very tough one for most of us, not everything about 2020 was terrible. This blog is a good example. In the first year of a ten-year mission to plant one million trees,The Lean House Effect has planted 3,350 trees! This is a tremendous accomplishment and these 3,350 trees will account for pulling 73,000 kg of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually. However, this represents only 0.33% of the overall goal, so we need to step it up.
I’m willing to put my money where my mouth is. For every free signup to this newsletter by the end of January, I will pay for one tree to be planted out of my own pocket! Please share with your network and get your friends and family to sign up.
As a reminder, you can become a paid subscriber to The Lean House Effect and we’ll use part of your subscription to plant two trees every month on your behalf.
Why remote work is a Win-Win
With the end to the pandemic in sight, and so many people still working from home or looking for new jobs, I wanted to take a look at the financial implications of remote work.
Before we get into it though, I know that many people have struggled with working from home because they have had children to take care of, or shared a small space with their family, or have felt cooped up and lonely. As someone who was a remote worker long before COVID-19, I think it’s important that we acknowledge there is a massive difference between working from home with all the restrictions of a pandemic compared with the freedoms and flexibility of remote work in a normal world.
Employers improve their bottom line
Many large tech companies, like Google, Square, Twitter and Shopify, have announced permanent work from home policies. Yes, they are doing this for their employees, because two-thirds of employees would prefer to work from home and 80% consider the option a job perk. But they’ve also discovered that 36% of employees would choose to work from home over a pay raise and are more likely to remain in the job for longer. Losing a valued employee and having to find, hire and train a replacement can cost an employer tremendously. Plus, the employer can save thousands on office expenses.
On average, for each employee who works remotely, an employer can save between $7,000 and $27,000 on an annual basis. Furthermore, the research shows that employers can hire from a much larger talent pool, hire less often, and these remote workers are actually more productive, have less unscheduled absences, and continue to work when they’re sick and will not infect other workers. Moreover, in the case of employees who would normally endure long commutes, all parties benefit; if they choose, employees can start work earlier or finish later, giving more to their job while still spending more time with their families, friends and hobbies.
There’s been a lot of discussion on how the pandemic-forced working from home trend can save your employer lots of money, but what does it mean for the employee’s wallet?
Employees effectively gain a salary increase
If you’ve been working from home throughout the pandemic and are wondering whether you should go back to the office in 2021 and beyond, you might be surprised at how much more than flexibility a remote job can offer you. For the average person, working a remote job is like adding between $5,000 and $10,000 to your salary versus an in-person job. You probably don’t believe me, so let me break it down for you.
For someone earning in the lowest tax bracket, who lives close to work, brings their lunch with them every day, doesn’t need work-specific clothing, and who would need to spend on a larger home-space in order to make the shift, working remotely would still translate to an almost $1,500 salary increase. On the other end of the spectrum, imagine a very high earner, commuting from the suburbs, wearing fancy clothes to work, buying coffee and lunch almost daily—for them, working remotely would translate to a more than $25,000 salary increase.
Remember, this is not just a benefit to the employee. The employer does just as well, if not better. I am not advocating that anyone takes a pay-cut to work from home. It’s a win-win arrangement for both employers and employees. Both sides should be aware of the benefits and satisfied with a more efficient and effective way to work.
A Win-Win-Win
We’ve all heard of a win-win, but is it possible for there to be a win-win-win? Something that benefits both employers, employees and the planet as well. Well, the numbers don’t lie. If there’s one positive that has come out of the pandemic and the forced stay-at-home orders, with some dumb luck we’ve reduced our global carbon emissions in 2020 by 7%. As a planet, this is almost exactly what we needed this year in order to stay on track with the 2030 Paris Accord targets. The UN says emissions must fall 7.6% annually by 2030 to reach the more ambitious temperature limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Some countries like Spain (-16%) and the United States (-13%) have done much better, and others like China (-1.4%) are lagging behind. It’s very unlikely that this trend will continue in 2021 and more likely that emissions will bounce back somewhat—But we need to celebrate the wins!
Of course, not all of this can be attributed to remote working. But, if people are not commuting to and from work, traveling for meetings, requiring an entire office space to be maintained, powered and cleaned, and buying more clothes, doing more laundry, eating more meals away from the house, creating more waste, and more, then their carbon footprint is dramatically reduced.
Push your employer to keep you working from home indefinitely and your company’s bottom-line, your savings account, and the planet will all thank you!
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Till next month,
Jacob
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