Reduced Commuting

Commuting is the travelling you do to reach your workplace, plus any journeys between workplaces during the day. Remote working means doing your job somewhere other than the workplace, usually home. A virtual meeting is a meeting held over a video call, so nobody travels to be in the same room. On a remote-working day, the journey to work is not needed, and a virtual meeting removes the journey to that meeting, so both can cut the time you spend commuting.

For example, Amina is a trainee surveyor. Her weekly safety briefing used to mean a 50-minute bus ride to the depot and 50 minutes back. The briefing is now a video call, so she saves 1 hour 40 minutes of travel that week.

What the saved time is worth

Saved commuting time is free for other activities, such as an evening class, cooking a proper meal or helping a family member. Less commuting can also make you more productive, because you do not arrive tired from the journey. The time and energy you would have spent travelling can go into your work, so you finish more tasks in the same working day and still have time for the rest of your life.