This morning, my wife decided to stay home and telework. So for once, I had company in the morning. I did my writing in one room, and she set up base in another.
After waking up lazily and taking her time to get ready, she fired up her laptop, connected to her VPN and started doing exactly what she does in the office! Which made me wonder why more people don’t decide to do it. I realize that not all bosses will be happy, but surely that’s a question of their own inability to monitor work? I feel a good manager should be able to ensure that his or her subordinates get their work done no matter where they are.
From where I sit, here are some major advantages:
- Less hassle. No commuting stress
- Can save hours by not having to travel
- No money spent on travel
- Reduces fossil fuel emissions and helps the environment
- Creates less traffic congestion on the road
- Can get some more sleep
- Cheaper for the company. No office to maintain
- Fewer accidents
- Potentially more free time to enjoy or spend with your family
It seems like a win-win situation for everyone involved. So I don’t know why more people don’t take it up. Do bosses feel they will lose control? Do they feel that employees will slacken? In these days of virtual conferences, email, and mobile phones, why do we need to sit in a particular place and work? I can understand sales people needing to go out and do their stuff, but the vast majority of administrative staff and desk workers need not.
I feel that management of telcommuting employees will be easy with objectives based management where each person is allocated tasks for the day and deadlines for completion. As long as they meet them, it doesn’t matter where they sit and what they do.
Of course, some people like to go to work. Sometimes I myself miss the hussle and bussle of an office – but for me, the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think?
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I would love to get my boss to agree that I can work from home. He is not convinced. I feel that certain jobs can be home based though not all
In reply to Phoenixritu
I think that as more and more people begin to work from home, we will find ways to get work done without face to face interactions. Better task management software and collaboration tools will play a role as well as education about how to use them…
Reason for working from office:
1. Data security: Most of the firms guard their research, data etc from competitors. In an office they can secure all the computers used. not possible if everyone is using their own laptop and might visit dubious websites (reason why a lot of insecure sites are not accessible from office).
2. Team work: If you want to get something asap (especially with a looming deadline), you can go to a persons desk and stand on their desk till you get the work done (believe me, at times its necessary, no matter how annoying). can’t do that virtually especially if the person has an option of not picking your call entirely or is out running errands. Also you learn what other person job is and how its done, that considerably expand your own skill set. Most of the times you learn the job you were not trained for from another team member and those skills do help if that team member is sick or unavailable. I learned quite a lot about things way beyond my area of expertise just by interacting with my team mates.
3. New Hires: How do you propose the new hires (freshly out of college) learn the trick of the trades if they can’t interact with people in the company? Usually at beginning of career you do trivial jobs but they observe senior people and thats how they learn from them, discuss with them, ask questions. It might not be very useful for senior people in the company but that’s how new hire learn the job. Mentoring will be very hard if everyone is working from home. No one will hire a fresh graduate then, will they?
4. Networking: Most people work well when they are talking face to face with the person they are working with instead of phones and video conferences: reason why video conferencing are only done for people out of the town. It also bond people at personal level, making work environment more friendly and less stressful/impersonal.
5. Social needs: Human by nature is a social animal and we do need to interact with others socially (don;t have to be friends but just social interaction). Ask any psychologist, interacting socially helps elevating the stress level.
Bottom line: Office help people from same team to interact which often expands the skill set they have. It is a very essential thing especially if your work requires team effort. And then there is always life long friendships that you make while working as a team.
In reply to Richa
Good points Richa. With regard to data security though, it's interesting that the company where my wife works has no such policies in place. No restrictions on USB drives etc and no restrictions on websites people can visit. I have a gut feeling that it's Indian companies who follow these practices since they believe that employees can't be trusted and need to be controlled. Her's is one of the most data intensive companies in the world. If they don't have a problem, then I think the issue is overblown in India.
I also agree with your point about social interaction. As a freelancer, I feel that too. The need can vary from person to person.
The other points you've given can, I think, be managed online with better tools. For example you've given the example of a priority jobs for which you need to sit on someone's head. With proper task management, you can get the other person to give a time for completion and if that time slips, then there's a clear trail as to why it didn't happen. Yes, it needs a more organized way of working – and as a person who's worked in many places, I know how difficult that is. But it can be done.
And of course, large companies are always afraid to try new things because of sheer inertia. I don't blame them either. But that doesn't mean there isn't a better way and with better tools and communications, I think the future is telework.
I totally agree with you. We should more and more start working from home. But yes, there are exceptional cases also.
@Richa,
1) I understand your point of Data Security.
2) As far as Team Work concern, we work with teams sitting far in US, UK or some other part of the world and I think we do well. And I you have to be on someone’s head to get the work done or not responsible person then they just not deserve to work in the organisation even if they are working from Office.
3, 4 and 5) Obviously all the people cant work from home because there are many things which cant be handle from outside office. There are alternates. Employees can come to office on alternate or 1/2 day in a week. And may be the people who are not responsible enough to work from home or they need someone on their head to complete the work can come to office.
There disadvantages of working from home but more advantages. Many of my colleagues in UK work from home and its not a problem at all.
There is one more reason to work from home. The homes are now very-very costly in the City area and very hard to afford. If you buy home in the outskirts then commuting will kill. In this case working from home is the biggest advantage.
In reply to Amit Verma
2) Its not necessarily that the person is lazy or can't work without supervision but everyone has far more responsibilities than just one team or task. At times, your task is not a priority for other person but it is for you and those are the times you actually have to make absolutely sure that it doesn't slip through their workload. I have done this umpteen number of times when I needed something urgently and the other person wasn't responding to emails or phones, I had to be on their desk, riding their back to get things done. They hate me for it but then there have been times I had to do it for them as well. Its simply the way things work in the office. As for offshore teams: I have coordinated with them and trust me, emails and phone calls don't tell them how urgent a certain task is. the money company will be loosing because the UK team failed to provide coordinates for next day field work: you simply can't drill it in their mind. To them I am being simply making up things as they don't understand how things work in field or in the team. It can become very frustrating pretty soon.
3,4,5) Again its not about how much a person is responsible or not. Its about understanding the urgency of a deadline and the priorities and you can't get that if you don't interact with someone in the field. At list in my area of expertise where we have to coordinate with field work as well as the office work, its absolutely necessary for the office people to understand the way field works and vice-versa. And this understanding is not possible if you work from home. The area of expertise differs in a team and you need to understand the basics of other person task in your team to be able to do your task well. And in my opinion, there is no point in your career that you have learnt everything and you can coordinate everything from home especially at the rate technology is changing these days. You just don't have to keep up with your own area of expertise but with your team members area of expertise to make a decision. Again team work is important and 2-3 hours of daily meeting (if thats what you are proposing to do in lieu of regular office hours) are simply not enough to learn everything. The talks next to coffee machine or during lunch hour helps a lot. Thats where I learned about other people's field.
And then, like it or not, there is office politics. you need to know the right people to get your job done. You can't do that from your home. And then there is something called a team dynamics. Somehow, it can't be build if all of them are working from home.
In an area where team effort is required to achieve a task: you need an office environment. Working from home is good if you don't have to work as a team, you can achieve your goals by individual effort (for example a writer, a photographer, an artist), but when teams comes into play you need an office.
Agreed there are problems associated with offices (cost of living etc.) but there is a reason why most companies prefer the old fashioned way. There is a reason why we send kids to school and not have computer teach them everything. There is a reason why we still live in a society..
In reply to Amit Verma
Just think of the number of hours wasted in commute! My wife used to spend four hours a day travelling back and forth in India. In the US, some people spend as much time in their tin cans getting from the suburbs to the city.
It horrifies me to think of all that lost time…
Good points all. My work environment is a bit of a hybrid, my office is a laptop in car. I leave from home, travel around servicing sites, and return home, meeting with my team at a central supply depot about once a week. Every two or three weeks my boss shows up for a meeting that usually amounts to more of a pep talk than anything.
I think a big part of employers' resistance to telecommuting boils down to mistrust of employees and control issues. The people I lead at work are people I've known variously from two to fifteen years – I trust these people, at least as far as going out and doing a good job without micromanagement goes, but my boss expects me to treat them all like criminals recently released from prison, ready to steal his home and children for the price of a six-pack of beer. His rationale for expecting them to screw him out of time, money, etc., "That's what I would do in their shoes." That tells me all I need to know.
I try not to judge all business owners and CEO's on the actions of a few, but the longer I live, the more I see this same paranoid and at times sociopathic attitude from the majority.
I think working on home seems like a good idea, but I don't think it is on a massive scale. It really depends on what type of job you have. I guess for me, I'm going into social work and and job like that requires me to visit people face to face. In other careers, I see how it's totally possible and how it would be a fantastic idea.
In reply to RenKiss
You’re right. It’s impossible to do away with the personal touch for your type of work. But then I guess you won’t be going much to a regular “office” will you?
No not really, though there is some office work involve like filling out reports and such. But most of it is field work. :)
Sounds like most bosses I’ve known :D
But this just shows us that we need to learn better management skills. There must be objective ways of measuring performance that don’t rely on subjective judgments- and in the case of sales people, they already have those measurements.
Your boss seems to have been in their shoes at some point of time – and the fact that he thinks like that speaks volumes about his boss at the time and the management system that was in place.
We need to let go of a lot of baggage…
Sounds good on paper and makes a lot of sense. But is possible only for certain job profiles.
In reply to Purba
It’s my hope that companies start with at least those jobs which, as you said, are suitable. Once it starts, the problems will slowly get ironed out and a new way of working should slowly emerge. I’m an eternal optimist :D
Bhagwad, I have understood the way technology and the growth of IT companies is advancing that very shortly when the market will be saturated with IT companies offerings, companies will start cutting down their cost on hiring buildings/security personnel/ data-centers etc. The only option that they will stand to continue at the lowest cost will be mobility option for employees. Every cubicle cost an organisation thousands of rupees every month, and cutting down on these old fashioned techniques of working for better control etc will need a revamp.
I see the days when with very small projectors you will sit in your room, projector projecting the office environment and your colleagues cubicles on all the four walls. So this way your manager will see you and will come and stand on your head when he want some urgent work to be done. Also you will meet in a meeting room virtually and take decisions as if you have been in board rooms…
I think this virtual environment will resolve all the issues of mobility and conventional way of working…What say?
In reply to Sajid
Wow Sajid – you’re way ahead of the rest of us! Tools like that will surely help shorten the gap between the home and office. But to tell the truth, it sounds a bit scary. All the invasion of privacy. But let’s see! It might come to be that way…
Some things that need to be in place for work from home to happen in the long term (from the perspective of one who has worked from home for several years):
1. It is not for everyone. When you do this day after day, week after week, unless you are a highly motivated individual, the lack of effort to not dress up and make it in on time leaks a bit and needs regular propping up.
2. Social interaction is critical in the long run. An only work from home model is highly isolating for the employee and can cut them off from other view points. There is some benefit to water-fountain/coffee-machine conversations.
3. Face time is a fact that can't be done away with. It seems like it is human nature to believe someone has worked when you see them work. Despite evidence to the contrary. Needing more proving from the employee.
4. Working from home can mean being on a 24 hour leash. Emails have to be answered much more promptly than you might have in a physical office. They are home after all, why the delay for reasons such as having a life?! :-D
5. For an employee, working from home definitely blurs the line between work and personal. In these days of having your email follow you everywhere by living in your phone (not mine, thank god!), the lines are already blurred. Carving out spaces that are meant for me, the person gets tough because it is very easy to work and cook, work and do laundry, work and …you get the drift.
Working from home was my lot for a few years when I could only work from home with small kids or not work at all. And at the end of the day, it took me a lot more time to get people around to my view points, et al. Chose to work short days in the office, keeping the tasks that only I had to work on for home. And found it easier to get some work-life balance AND respect as a professional.
My 300 cents!
In reply to Sangitha
Your fears are justified. I too have thought that working from home can lead to a degradation in personal life.
I've often thought that in the future when everyone teleworks, each community will have "work centers" where all the individuals in the neighborhood walk everyday to do their daily work online. It'll have all the office amenities such as coffee, recreation centers and of course, high speed internet.
This will not only restore the work/family boundaries, it'll also keep the social aspects of work! Of course everyone will probably work for different companies…and for it to work, there has to be a sufficient density of teleworkers.
Just dreaming…