To work from home - or not? An unpopular opinion.

I often see posts lambasting businesses for not offering Work From Home (WFH) as an option.

There are pros and cons to everything - much of the attention of course falls to the pro's rather than the cons. Equally it's notable that the majority calling for a WFH revolution are employees and not business owners. That in itself is quite telling of the reality.

COVID forced companies globally to adapt to WFH for a period of time. It showed resilliance, it showed compromise and of course it highlighted inefficiencies in the old dusty and theoretical 'emergency resillience planning' that many companies held for years as a safety net.

The reality is that WFH is not a good fit to some industries. In my particular industry its a terrible fit and not practical. We work in a secured environment that is highly kinetic and highly collaborative - we are the sum of the parts. This means that the closer we work togather daily, the more we learn from each other and are involved on the periphery of projects developing a better client side experience.

As someone who does a load of training, I was obliged to work the Zoom/Teams route for training and webinars under COVID. I was equally glad to see the back of those sessions as soon as life resumed. You just cannot get the audience participation, engagement and outcomes over a camera that you can in person. Reading the room is vital - adapting your presentation on the fly to suit that audience. Delivery via camera robs you as a presenter of the opportunity to read that room.

Now. As a business owner, if I was going to do WFH for the full company - would I still employ in my country? Why would I? I can then appoint under contract globally. No monthly employee tax submissions, simple invoicing for hours, hire only what I need, be able to grow/shrink my staff compliment as I need - AND i get to choose from a global talent pool. If I choose wisely, I can zero in on economies that offer cheaper hourly rates. What a solid win!

I could reduce staff costs to invoice base, not sit with the hassles of govt documentation for employees and taxes every month. Mmm.. not a bad idea - but where is the BUSINESS?

Any business is just a building. It's nothing more than a concept and some bricks and mortar until you add the people. The people form the culture, the behaviour, the spirit of the company. They become the collective 'company' through their shared knowledge and experience. Without that - there really isn't much of a company.

I also hear the argument for 'let them WFH once a week!" We have weekends for that. We have leave days too. We also have public holidays. I don't really think we need much more than that thank you.

WFH works for some positions and industries - but I refuse to have it forced down my throat and being labeled as a madman because I don't want my entire staff in wfh mode. It's my business and I have to run it my way - because ultimately I'm responsible for ensuring service delivery to clients and that the staff are paid. I'm equally responsible for the secure management over the stuff we work with and the data we create.

While I would salivate at the prospect of hiring a global workforce on an invoice basis with no office overheads, no SDL, PAYE, UIF forms every month etc. I am trying to build a company - a collective of skills and experience and in my world that means we work in a building, accessible to walk in clients, collaborative in nature and there to work.