Transcript of the Video:


As a person that has employed people all over the world that have performed a broad variety of tasks within different locations, I’ve found a measurable difference between a person working from home vs working from an office.



Furthermore, if you’re outsourcing it’s important to understand the difference in output and quality of work depends on the location a person works.

David Judge here from Affordable Staff and I’m going to share the difference between an outsourced person working from home or within an office environment. I’m going to share ‘real data’ to show the difference I’ve found within our team and for you to make up your own mind if you’re considering outsourcing within your business.

The Cost Of Working From Home VS An Office


Obviously when a person works within an office space there are additional costs above working from home, as you’re paying for that person to work from a commercial premise.

Unlike a home environment this includes:

  • Guaranteed Power
  • Guaranteed Internet
  • Supply of an office space with a working computer
  • Client / data security
  • Removal of non-work related distractions
  • A professional environment that is designed and supports work
  • and more…


Guaranteed internet



Office space with a working computer



Client / data security


The MailChimp Survey On Working From Home


As a matter of fact in an independent survey conducted by survey monkey that asked real people ‘the biggest challenges when working from home’, they found 35% of people had issues with Internet and other distractions from getting the job done equaled over 50% when combined.

Cloud-based online survey


This included distractions from pets, children, TV noise, background noise and other random distractions which combined together meant a person would take longer to perform the same task that they would normally perform within a structured office.


Working in the office frees you from the distractions of pets…



…and children.


The Facts On Home Vs Office


So let’s break that down further and have a look at data we collected from ‘Hubstaff’ and one of the biggest reasons we made the transition to our entire team working from an office.

Side Note: Hubstaff is a time tracking software we use to gain an understanding of our teams activities.

Hubstaff takes screenshots for us to better understand and monitor the activity levels


Through using hubstaff we looked at the average % of activity using a cross section of employees working from home and found their activity sat at around 55% for a particular task.

Through talking to our team we interestingly we found the same 2 main issues… Internet and Distractions. As we could actually see detailed information around a person’s activity, we could see these issues in their screenshots.

So remember 55%…

We transitioned to the office understanding there would be a cost involved, yet we also expected to gain on productivity for this task and other tasks.

This is where we were pleasantly surprised… when we moved to a physical office space we took those same cross section of people and measured their activity for the same task.

The result was an increase  from 55% to 76% or 21% increase in activity.


The productivity % for a specific task before we moved to the office



The productivity % for a specific task after we moved to the office


A 21% increase in the activity level after our transition to the office – This is Massive


In real world terms if it meant it would take a team member 5 hours to complete a task, they were able to complete that same task in 4 hours.

When we asked our team why they thought they were able to perform better, they told us they were able to remain more focused and the fact they were in a professional environment meant they felt more obliged to focus on their job. In other words they took more ownership of their role.

The Increase Outweighs The Cost In Efficiency Alone


So this increase in performance alone outweighs the additional cost of the office space without mentioning increased client security and the ability to hold the team more accountable for their roles.

These factors are why our clients work with us as they have peace of mind and they find their team are more efficient.


If you’d like to find out more about how outsourcing can work within your business you can call us anywhere within Australia on 1300 139 482

This is David Judge from Affordable Staff showing Australian businesses how to achieve business efficiency through outsourcing.


Working from home Vs office reference – https://www.surveymonkey.com/blog/2013/03/04/work-from-home-survey-results/

Hubstaff – https://hubstaff.com/