Commuting Costs Better Spent

For many south shore residents, working from home will be here to stay. At least well into 2021 anyway. The benefits of working from home include the ability to make your schedule, better work-life balance, and time and money saved on commuting. A recent survey with over 100 MA based companies found that 39% of the workforce expects to be back at their workplace by January 2021 and that 47% plan to continue to work remotely following a vaccine. 

While working from home can have many advantages, there can also be some detrimental effects. Employees may have a hard time staying focused and productive if they don’t have a dedicated distraction-free space in their home. They may also miss out on the social-emotional benefits of working with colleagues. It’s a delicate balance, and for some, the latter points may be enough to forgo the freedom of working from their kitchen table and reentering the office workplace. A plan of returning to the office in the city brings the reality of adding the commute back into your daily life. Will you once again become a slave to the MBTA schedule or a contributor to the several miles-long traffic back up? Will the time it takes you to commute be productive enough? (Maybe staying home and scheduling conference calls while your children watch Netflix isn’t so bad?) 

Working from home during the pandemic, employees have filled what once was commute time with more time for families, hobbies, and activities. In addition to commute time, there’s the cost of commuting, which you may gladly spend to have a quiet spot to work and a socially distant water cooler chat that isn’t about why the sky is blue. On average, a south shore commuter from Hingham spends about $350 a month in train/ferry passes and parking. To say nothing of adding in an additional $90 for a Charlie Card if your office isn’t near Rowe’s Wharf or South Station. 

Luckily there is a happy medium between work from home and work from an office downtown. At Workspace@Shipyard we offer secure furnished private offices along with the benefits of a coworking environment. For the monthly cost of commuting, you can have your dedicated workspace free of distraction, and you won’t need to give up 2 hours of your life getting there and back every day.