One-fifth of telecommuters would sacrifice benefits to work from home

Telecommuters really like working from home. This isn't news to anyone who manages a virtual office, where employees can design their own work flow, enjoy the comforts of home and enjoy many other benefits of telecommuting. But on the subject of benefits, more than one-fifth of flex workers admitted that they'd sacrifice health coverage in a compensation package in order to work from home. 

Naturally, this suggestion was purely hypothetical, but it goes to show what a stronghold flexible work options have over the considerations many employees make when choosing an employer. A FlexJobs study also found that one in five employees would accept a 10 percent pay reduction in order to telecommute. This comes as good news to virtual offices with limited resources, as the benefits you offer in a work from home package can trump salary or healthcare for some employees. 

The best case scenario is this: happy telecommuters with full health benefits and a competitive salary. However, for startups and companies experiencing weak revenues, executives might be surprised by the quality of talent they can attract on the strength of their office flexibility alone. Many workers have busy family lives to consider, limited access to transportation and other circumstances that make telecommuting the most important item on the benefit menu. 

Most professionals will tell you that there's no such thing as a perfect compensation package: There could always be more perks, more insurance policies, better savings accounts and a bigger biweekly paycheck. Through interviewing applicants, designing positions and conceiving an offer, managers could defy traditional expectations of what certain employees need to feel satisfied. It could be that the freedom to work from home is worth more to an employee than a big raise.