With the advancement in technology and the ability to work remotely for a lot of different jobs, the working from home policy in companies has gained popularity over the last decade. We are at a point where a lot of employees ask for this while negotiating their job offers or roles with an old/new employer.
Let’s explore the various sides of his policy from an employer perspective and whether such a policy makes sense for your business or not.
The Good
This gives your employees flexibility. We all understand that there could be certain days where some chores need to be taken care off, like a meeting your relationship manager at the bank, or a parent-teacher meeting at school, or a regular doctor’s appointment, it could be anything under the sun. It is a good feeling that your employer is understanding, and the HR policies are employee centric. In some cases, it has even been observed that this leads to higher productivity amongst employees.
The Bad
Can lead to biases. Some employees might take more of these days than the others and this might lead to a taken-for-granted attitude in the long run. I remember when I used to for a Finance Company a few years back, Friday was delegated as the work from home day for a certain group that used to commute from New York. This led to these people having a 3-day weekend compared to the rest of the staff, which obviously deep down inside led to certain grudges! Keep in mind that these were senior-level employees and they were always available.
The Ugly
You give these to an immature employee, and you will regret it. Working from home does not mean a day off. We have experienced this problem that when people used to work from home, they ended up being unavailable most of the time. Worst of all, there have been instances where certain individuals went for interviews at other companies while pretending to be “working from home!” These employees end up abusing the whole system and defy its complete purpose.
Bottom line
It all boils down to the kind of employee and the nature of work that they have at home. Rather than having a company policy (if your company is a larger one, then sure go ahead), it can be an individual level agreement that is negotiated during an appraisal or hiring. One poor employee can destroy your company culture where people think working from home is synonymous with not working at home!
The secret checklist that you should have at your end for this purpose –
- Seniority
- The value that employee brings
- The commute
- The health of the employee
- The productivity of the employee
- History of working from home
- Nature of work they do
- Frequency
- Responsibilities
These are just pointers; you can add or remove as per your policy/company. We do allow Work from home under exceptional circumstances. If you have some crazy policies at work, feel free to share them with us at contactus@dignitasdigital.com