Working from Home - Is It A Good Option?

The daily commute to the workplace is what almost everyone dislikes. Most of us dream to work from home or to have a home office. Well a home office can be there if you have your own business too. In this article we talk about the employees who work from home or wish to have a home office!

There are two aspects to look at the concept of a home office – from the perspective of the employer and from the that of the employee.

A big company that has several thousand workers, spends a lot of money on the office space at the workplace. There are several costs that add up by just having an employee in the office. Some of the main costs are: a) the real estate cost, b)the cost of the office furniture, c) electricity and air conditioning cost, d) insurance liability and safety cost, e) the cost of the coffee and other kitchen equipments provided for the employees, f) the cost of employees being grumpy to come to office and loss of productivity due to the stress from the daily commute and the employee taking care of home tasks in the office, and there several more. If you take a look at these costs, you would see that they add up to pretty sizable amounts for each employee per year! Then why do the companies want the employees to come to office everyday and not work from home?

One simple answer is the old school that the senior management belongs to. They believe if the employees “work” from home, they might not be spending all the time they should for office work and the company might suffer from non-productivity of the employees who work from home. Some companies need the employees in the office because of the criticality of the services a firm provides to the customers. Like a company that deals with stock market would need the engineers who maintain the computer networks in the office so that any network disruptions can be handled expeditiously to minimize the impact on the service they provide to their customers.

On the other hand, there are some companies who prefer to have most of their employees work from home. The simple reason for these companies is they judge the productivity of the employee by the completion of the given work in the given time frame. They really do not care if the employee works at night or during the office hours, as long as the work gets done in the given time. They prefer to have daily status meetings so that all the employees can dial in and catch up with each other and know about the projects they are working on and provide the status of their own work.

Therefore if the cost of having the employee in the office is less than the company makes money by having the employee present in the office, the management would prefer that their employees do not work from home.

Regardless of what the management thinks, there are now federal rules that mandate the continuity of business and having some or all employees out of the office ensures that if a disaster happens at the office the people working from remote can still do their task and take care of the customer needs. Therefore, more and more companies are now allowing more and more employees to work from home and have their own home office.

From the employee perspective, working from home or having a home office is often preferred because it avoids the stress from the daily commute and allows the employee to attend to home chores like say baby sitting. Would it not be cool to just work wearing pajamas?

There are some employees who would want to be away from home in order to be able to do their daily work. These employees do not prefer working from home or having a home office due to the distractions they might have during the day that prevents them from completing their job. Some employees feel, and very rightly too, that if they are not in the office in front of their management, they might get neglected when it is time for a pay raise or promotions. They think a rival of theirs might influence the management adversely against them and being present in the office would help avoiding such situations.

With the new technology, communication is not a problem anymore. The employees who telecommute can still be in touch with their office or the management can keep an eye on the employees if even when the employees are at their own home office or working from home.