Work From Home ?
I usually do not blog on current events or anything that is not absolutely abstract. But I read a blog post recently which tried to show benefits and utility of Working From Home. I started writing a comment but then realized it would be too big, so instead expressing my opinion in a blog post.
Marissa Mayer received lot of flak for removing WFH option for yahoo employees. Many people also commended her for the bold step. I felt couple of points need to be highlighted here .
I usually do not blog on current events or anything that is not absolutely abstract. But I read a blog post recently which tried to show benefits and utility of Working From Home. I started writing a comment but then realized it would be too big, so instead expressing my opinion in a blog post.
Marissa Mayer received lot of flak for removing WFH option for yahoo employees. Many people also commended her for the bold step. I felt couple of points need to be highlighted here .
- Some people do not work . Period.
- Personally I take WFH when I know I do not have much work to do. Because I am a bachelor not extremely dedicated to my work , so when I am working from home, I am bound to have some sitcom or movie playing on my laptop which obviously does not bring about very high productivity.
- I understand you may work hard because you are dedicated but what if there are people like me for whom WFH absolutely brings down productivity.Yahoo had many such people who stayed home day after day and wanted to collect there salary on payday
- Synergy
- People communicate differently on chat /phone and in person. Sometimes great ideas are built during water cooler conversations. If you are working from home you are going to open conversation only if you need something and you are more likely to discuss only that point. Whereas in personal interaction just seeing someone can lead to 1 hour conversation which can end up in great product idea. I remember how while having a sudoku solving competition we got an idea to build a program which would do it rather instantaneously. Obviously it was very small thing but it would have never have occurred to me if I was solving puzzle on my own. But because my friend was there we came up with competition and built a program around it. Point is sometimes whole is greater than sum of its parts.
- Communication
- Yes I know all about webex, live meeting ,lynx, communicator but sometimes you just cannot achieve same level of communication. I remember exchanging 30 mails with some guy trying to understand an issue. Finally I decided to walk over to his desk and in flat 5 min we had issue categorized, root cause identified and ETA for solution.
- Relationships
- I met a guy in a team meeting later, we had a short conversation ,later he invited me for review sessions of his software design, I gave him some inputs which I would like to believe helped implement solution much faster. Today he is good friend and product is stable and n number of times I have taken help from him and vice versa. This would never have happened if I WFH daily.
- Personally for me I do not usually WFH because my client pays my company 3 times the money for my physical presence and not having same work being done by someone in India, Also I like my morning spiced caramel coffee which I cannot make at home, nor the spinach garden vegetable wrap I have for lunch :)
There are 100's of similar point here, WFH has its own advantages but they more specific to certain kind of individuals .Now lets looks at advantages WFH offers
- Work comes second
- You have a highly talented logistic manager but she is a mom and does not want to leave her kid to nanny. So unless you give her WFH you lose her.
- Commutation Time
- Few people would actually put in extra time and effort if they can save on commute time.
- Away from Chaos
- If I am doing something that is extremely complex and needs lot of thought process than I would definitely want to work from home without any distraction.. One eureka moment is equal to weeks of works in chaotic office.
- Simply does not matter
- Some mundane and routine work can be done literally from any place on earth and you would not want to rob someone of pleasure of working in their underwear with a full refrigerator at their home
So if hypothetically I was to become a CEO or HR head of the company ( which I know would never happen ) what would I do.
I would like to give people fix number of days(50 or so) they can WFH like we have leaves or if there is a genuine need but frown upon it on daily basis .Other way is to make certain days of WFH for everyone.
~~Ciao
