Your employee is working from home. How do you feel? And be honest.
Are you an organization which gives liberty to an employee to work from home?
Do you do that with all your heart or is it only for name-sake?
Do you keep keep an eye on what your employee has been up to in their homes or do you trust them with your office work completely?
Do you believe them when they say that they tried their best or do you set unrealistic expectations in terms of delivery and ask them to deliver more than what they can from office?
Employees prefer work from home because it gives them
- Autonomy over how they do their work and to live where they feel they should
- Controlled work environment: they can choose their desk, desk positioning, clothes, food, music/silence, temperature, etc.
- Time which they spend on getting ready and commuting every day and spend that on something more important to them
Employers should have more and more Distributed workforce (across their country/the world) because
- Distributed workforce is the new 'in' thing. 90% of the companies (that are going to change the course of the world) are going to function this way in a decade or two. Those who won't, will be replaced.
- This gives employees a sense of ownership & reliance that their employer trusts them and that they're a part of something big.
Some factors to keep in mind when working from home:
- Document everything so there's no scope of confusion
- Move communications online to improve collaborations
- Find the right tools for all your office needs
- When you are in a role where specific hours are important, you need to make your own schedule so as to not miss the timelines.
So as long as employees can find good Wi-Fi, employers should not care where they are. If you start micromanaging things, your employees might feel like the "Work From Home" facility is only for name-sake and he/she might not feel very happy about taking accountability or ownership of the work/task assigned to them.
Having said that, there are people who "cannot" work from home and hence, should not be provided with such facility, until very-very urgent. Learn to identify them to take concrete decision on whether to allow them to work from home or just give them a leave. We'll discuss about those people in the next article. Until then, please stay tuned.
Thanks for reading!
Founder & Managing Partner at THE PERFECT 1 ONE PARTNERS
5 年we truly believe in the work from home culture. we see only advantages in doing so and no disadvantage. Employers fail to embrace this when they cannot think of controls beyond physical controls. Its time all employers look at this seriously given the current constraints like TRAFFIC, COST OR REAL ESTATE FOR THE EMPLOYEE , COST OF REAL ESTATE FOR THE EMPLOYER , OTHER OFFICE COSTS. We truly believe it gives higher efficiency than having a team sit in an office.