Telecommuting is a word that sends shivers up many bosses' spines. The idea of relying upon your workforce to remain efficient, productive and disciplined when they are out of your sight goes against many business leaders' core beliefs about effective management. After all, you could be, unwittingly, paying your staff members to play with their dogs or sit on the couch watching daytime telly.

Yet allowing staff members to work from home either on a periodical or full time basis offers a number of terrific benefits. While it might not be suited to every company, it is well worth considering how many of these could apply to you should you allow telecommuting.

Lower costs

This is, perhaps, the best reason to introduce a work from home scheme of some sort in your workplace. The less members of staff in your building, the less you will be spending on running costs, expenses and your monthly bills. You might even be able to downsize to a smaller office, thus saving on rent, or perhaps even do away with a physical business location completely.

Lower your carbon footprint

If you are concerned about your business' environmental impact, then telecommuting is going to be a smart move. The traditional office, with its mountains of paperwork and non-stop power consumption, is not generally a green organisation. Telecommuting reduces your carbon footprint, placing a greater emphasis on digital data movement and less of an emphasis on copying and printing.

Attract employees from a wider geographical area

If employees do not need to be in the office every day, the net for who you hire becomes larger. You can even employ skilled workers living in different cities or countries. With a bigger geographical area to choose from, the chances of finding high quality workers become better.

Happier workforce

Telecommuting has plenty of advantages for the worker too. One of the key elements workers who prefer telecommuting cite is the improved work-life balance it offers. Without the daily and nightly commute to and from work, the employee gets to spend more time with their family. Similarly, it allows them to choose where they live based only on how good it is for them and their loved ones and not on its proximity to the office.

Even in the most peaceful business environment, conflict is, at some time, inevitable. At times, people will disagree and, when you consider the passion with which people pursue their careers, these disagreements may turn into conflicts. As a manager or supervisor, it is your job to resolve such issues in a manner that benefits the company. Here are four important steps to resolving workplace conflicts, if they occur between two members of your workforce.

Do not delay

As soon as you have noticed a serious issue, do not rest on your laurels. By leaving the issue to fester, you can only make it worse. In fact, if you don't step in soon, a relatively minor grievance between two workers can boil over into a major company issue as other members of staff are sucked into the situation.

Have a private meeting with both members of staff

In order to tackle this situation, you are best off discussing the issue, separately, with both involved parties in a private location (your office should be fine). You do not want to either drag the issue out in front of the entire workforce or show favouritism to either person. Get both of their opinions on what is going on and give them time to put across both sides of the story.

Deliberate but do not blame

Your job is not to find out who is to blame for the issue but to come to a conclusion about the fairest way for it to be curtailed. This is the most important thing – that you no longer have to worry about a conflict in your workforce affecting your business. It might be the case that everything can be resolved with a handshake. It might be the case that discipline needs to be issued. Either way, your decision should be based only on what is best for the company.

Be confident in your decision

If you need to discipline either of the involved staff members, it is important for you to do so with complete confidence. Do not feel the need to talk constantly or fill in awkward pauses in the conversation. Be firm, be fair and have faith in your decision.

For the modern workplace, it pays to be green. If you can lower your power consumption and lower your consumable usage, you can boost your budget. It doesn't matter what industry you work in or how many staff members you employ or how big or small your workplace is, a greener workplace will be a more efficient and cost effective workplace too.

Here are some key tips to keeping your business' environmental efficiency high and running costs low.

Switch it all off

If you go into the average office outside of business hours, you would be amazed to see how many machines are still running, needlessly draining money from the budget. While the workplace is deserted all weekend, you are still likely to find copiers in standby mode, monitors still up and running, vending machines plugged in and overhead lights still on. In some cases you will even find air conditioning or heating units still running at full blast to the benefit of nobody.

Make sure every department in your building has a person who is responsible for ensuring all power-consuming items are turned off when not in use. Also, make sure your schedules for things like air conditioning are carefully followed.

Take advantage when the workforce is smaller

At certain times of year, a large proportion of your workforce is likely to take holidays simultaneously. At Christmas, for example, there's a very good chance you will have a week or two-week period where your staff numbers are heavily depleted.

While this might lower your output, it can also boost your budget thanks to reduced running costs. To take full advantage, move all present employees to the same part of the office and then turn off the lights and hardware in the rest of the business.

Buy Energy Star certified products

The Energy Star is the globally recognised symbol for sustainable hardware. This little blue box is only awarded to truly cost effective and eco-efficient products. If you ensure you only purchase equipment that has earned this certification, you can rest assured that your power consumption will never be needlessly high due to the hardware.

Some people spend their whole lives trying to succeed in business. Often, they will be gifted, diligent and dedicated in this pursuit, spending years perfecting business plans and budgets, learning theory and crafting the perfect money making ventures. And, just as often, they will fail.

Then, somebody will come along with a nonsensical idea for a business that any sane business-minded person would dismiss in a hot second, and will take the world by storm, making a packet in the process. Here is our top three highly lucrative businesses that sounded bad to others at the initial inception.

Post-it Notes

In 1968 Dr. Spencer Silver a scientist at 3M in the United States, was attempting to develop a super-strong adhesive. Instead he accidentally created a low-tack, reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive. For years, Silver promoted his "solution without a problem" within 3M both informally and through seminars but failed to gain acceptance. In 1974 a colleague who had attended one of his seminars, Art Fry, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his book. Fry then utilized 3M's policy to develop the idea. The original notes' yellow color was chosen by accident, as the lab next-door to the Post-It team had only yellow scrap paper to use.

Pet Rocks

The 70s saw a few weird trends come and go, but few were weirder than the Pet Rock. Launched in 1975, Pet Rocks were designer Gary Dahl's idea of a ‘perfect pet' – cheap, low-maintenance, even-tempered and with no waste for you to pick up. Plus they lived forever. Laugh all you like, but people queued up to pay good money for Dahl's creation: a rock with two googly eyes. It made its creator $15 million after just six months.

Plastic Wishbones

Who knew that so many people sitting around dinner tables felt frustrated that only two people got to snap the wishbone after the turkey? Well, Ken Ahroni did and that's why he manufactured LuckyBreak, the plastic wishbones that make more than 2.5 million dollars in sales each year.