Should (some of) Your Employees Work From Home?

Marissa Meyer, soon after taking over the reins at Yahoo, surprised many by banning “working from home”.  Defending this change in policy, seen by many as almost counter-intuitive for an Internet-centric organization like Yahoo, Meyer stated that she wanted people to be more “collaborative and innovative” and that she felt this was more likely if people shared work space.  The internal Yahoo memo that announced the ban on home working though also suggested that the company felt that speed and quality of work were negatively affected. There are acknowledged challenges to managing remote workers as well as coordinating work among team members, although many of these obstacles are being surmounted by technology tools and “apps” that facilitate communication between people who aren’t in the same location – companies with geographically-distributed locations have learned to deal with this already.

Now, it’s fairly simple to see some of the benefits of allowing people to work from home. You save them the cost of a commute, you may save on office space (if I don’t have to give you a room or even a cubicle, my office space – and the overhead associated with it- is smaller), people are more likely to get work done when they are sick, people who want to work AND take care of  young children don’t have to make a choice between the two. These arguments often lose out to the fear of “inefficient workers”. But are “work from home” employees REALLY less efficient?

Anyone who has watched the TV show “The Office” will recognize the many distractions that are present in the modern-day office. Co-workers who just want to pass the time or socialize, coffee (or smoking) breaks that last far longer than they should, parties and celebrations, drama, the loud co-worker in the next cubicle distracting you. All of these issues disappear when you work at home. Focus and efficiency is often increased.

A 2012 study from the University of Texas concluded that home based workers put in 5 to 7 more hours of work per week than their co-workers who stayed exclusively in the office. These same individuals were more likely to work overtime when needed.

Steve Dubner, the co-creator of Freakanomics, recently cited a study from a Chinese call center that used a sample size of 500 and discovered that the employees who worked from home were actually 13 percent more productive than their cohorts who stayed in the office. And, as one researcher noted ” They also started and stopped on time, because they didn’t turn up late because commuting, or the plumber didn’t turn up or they were sick, etc.”

Forbes magazine, commenting on the same study, also noted that there was 50% less attrition among the workers who telecommuted. Further though, Forbes reported that once the study was concluded, about half of the workers who had been randomly selected to work from home chose to return to the office. They may have felt too isolated in their home working environment, among other reasons.

What appears to be likely is that, for employees who have jobs that could be performed at home, giving them a choice to stay in the office environment or do their work from home might maximize the potential for productivity.

Our take on it – any company that is willing to consider having some of their employees work from home should consider the following steps:

1. Assess employee interest – frankly if your workers are not interested in working at home, you probably shouldn’t pursue it for the time being.
2. Research job duties and descriptions to determine which jobs are most suitable for off-site working arrangements. In most organizations, not every position would be eligible.
3. Similarly, recognize that some jobs are suitable for a “partial” solution, where an employee might work from home, say, three days a week and come into the office the other days.
4. Consider a pilot project, selecting a representative sample of workers and allowing them to work from home, but measure outcomes for productivity gains or losses.
5. Give your eligible employees a choice between working at home or staying in the office, and let those choices be reversible.

Please contact us if you would like more information about developing a work-from-home strategy for your company.