I work at Poltusa (once again a pseudonym – corporate courtesy). Poltusa has invested heavily in really nice offices, great furniture, ergonomic chairs, meeting rooms, whiteboards, office supplies – the whole 9 yards. Working in offices like Poltusa, for a typical person would be quite a positive experience except for the fact that is located off the suburbs of Colombo; which means a long 1-2 hour drive/Uber/Tuk/worse case scenario a sweaty congested bus ride commute twice a day.
Having worked at Poltusa for 5 years now, and having commuted in every possible way to and from work, I must admit that spending nearly 3 hours per day on the road, in snail pace, excruciatingly unbearable traffic, for 5 days a week has taken its toll on me. Roughly 3600 hours (amounting to nearly half an year) on the road for 5 years’ tenure hardly seems practical – that’s just time; imagine the cost. Assuming I used an Uber to and from work for the 5 years total, I would have approximately spent nearly 1 million Sri Lankan rupees (sigh!) just on transport [holy fudge – now that I calculated this, I might go back to using public transport to save $$$ on commute]
At the height of my frustration, I thought to myself, I should pen something down advocating working from home – ah those good days; when you get to sit in your drawls, in your familiar chair, repurposing your 29″ gaming display at home for something productive, have a constant supply of food and drink brought to you by your mother, not curse the incompetent idiots handling HVAC at office who can never get the temperature right and not be bothered by a constant visitors coming over to you to cubicle to break your train of thought.
I thought it was just me, but one study at Stanford has found that folks that work from home are in fact 13% more productive as opposed to being at office. As a self proclaimed introvert/social recluse, that little bit of seclusion, space and flexibility to think/work makes me work that much faster. Also, why all the trouble of getting into an office, if you don’t have that much work to do (and can get it done from home)? – so that people see you? DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE…
Even as a company, thinking of all the advantages, it is surprising why more workplaces aren’t encouraging their staff to work from home; less money spent on office space and supplies (IBM has cut back on nearly $100 million per year in office related expenses since beginning their “Work Outside The Box” program), less employee paid sick leaves (no illness sharing by coming into work), employees less needy for vacations outside of work and great soundbite to flaunt about at HR forums.
All this plus the technology enablers available to employers – the VPNs for security, remote conferencing for communication and productivity tracking software to ensure that your employees don’t slack, make me wonder why there isn’t more advocacy for telework in the white collar employer spectrum.
The best reason that I can postulate is the fact that employers/managers fear loss of control associated with not being able to witness productivity of their workforce firsthand. If I, as a manager am suspicious that an employee who works remotely would not really work productively (get the job done) and hoodwink the system, I should never have hired the person in the first place. A nice quip I picked up in research was that – a manager does not witness productivity when an employee sits in office, they just witness presence.
The best way to witness productivity is to collectively agree on measurable and time-bound goals collectively with your team mates + adhering to a strong communication schedule to make sure everything stays on track.
Employers don’t need to go all or nothing when it comes to teleworking. A hybrid theory is always the best theory – one day a week touch point for code greens, three days a week for code reds + whenever necessary seems a solid approach.
I project personal experience and summarize for brevity; Here are 2 proper fully fledged articles about why working from home is a ~panacea for poor employee productivity:
- https://hbr.org/2014/01/to-raise-productivity-let-more-employees-work-from-home
- http://blog.hubstaff.com/disadvantages-of-working-from-home/
If all this, as a manager doesn’t motivate you to let yourself and your team work from home, the link below might:
This blog post has been read and approved by Marissa Mayer
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