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Pros and Cons of Work-from-Home: How does it Affect Your Salary?

February 9, 2021

By Vahid Haghzare, Director Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment &
Victor Chen, Senior Recruiter, Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment

One of the top IT Recruitment Agencies in Hong Kong, Dubai, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Singapore, and Japan, SVA Recruitment is an IT and employment agency that provides jobs, executive search, and recruitment services.

The outbreak of COVID-19 brought many changes in our environment, even in our working lives. People are highly encouraged for home quarantines and to stay away from public or crowded spaces. Workers who can work without necessary face-to-face interaction are also assigned to work from home. Thus employees need to adjust not only to their personal surroundings but also to a new working setup.

Silicon Valley Associates Recruitment offers you the industry trend about how work-from-home setups can affect your competitive salary and company policies.

There is a growing trend in the industry pertaining to the home-based arrangement. Many companies like Facebook, Twitter, Square, and Nationwide Insurance have opted to shift from office-based to home-based primarily due to the pandemic. As a result, they reduced their salaries based on the cost of living where the employees live. This is because they will no longer commute from home to the office.

Also, employees who moved and rented real estate to stay near or along with their San Francisco headquarters or in New York will no longer be paying this if they moved to their original or chosen homes. These expenses raise more to the cost of living to employees, which forces employers to offers high salaries to meet the demands.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that about half the Facebook’s staff would work remotely within the next ten (10) years and have chosen some of its 48,000 employees for home-based jobs.

Meanwhile, position and job functions that cannot be done or need constant face-to-face interaction will not be eligible in this kind of setup. This is because they to be physically present in an office. Lower-level employees will also have to work from the office, as will new hires during their training period. Nevertheless, companies want to adjust to the problems we face right now by wanting to keep learning and improving on their operations.

Nevertheless, the Work-from-Home setup has its advantages and disadvantages. The following are some of the common pros and cons for employees who have shifted to a work-from-home setup.

Pros of Work-from-Home:

No Travel Time and Expense

Employees who work from home will no longer spend time and money to travel to the office.

More Flexible

Working from home allows you to work during your most productive times. Employees can also wear what they're most comfortable wearing and create a workflow that works for you.

Fewer Distractions

Most often than not, there would be less supervision and meetings when you work from home, which could affect your flow of work. You can also control distractions at home than the distractions coming from your workmates or office-based noise.

Cons of Work-from-Home:

Reduced Salary

Since you will no longer spend travel expenses and rent spaces near the office, employers might reduce employees’ salary based on the living expenses to the area they live.

Lack of Motivation and can be Lonely

You cannot also interact with your friends and workmates.

Need a Lot of Discipline

Employees who work from home can have a less physical separation between work and leisure time. To still perform productively like in the office, employees need to have a strong discipline to follow working schedules and not consume personal time in order to separate professional and personal time.

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Silicon Valley Associates is ideally positioned to support the continual demand from tech companies and IT Departments looking to hire in Hong Kong, Asia, and Worldwide. Please let us know if you would further advise on the above topic or your hiring needs