I have worked both extremes. My first job after college (certainly before the advent of telecommuting), I worked a consistent 8am-5pm. There was no working from home or taking work home. Currently, I work from home full-time. My hours are flexible (within reason), and I could, ostensibly, go for days without seeing anyone other than my husband and our dogs. All this is to say, my perspective on the matter is complicated, yet informed.
When Melissa Meyer took over the helm of Yahoo! and declared that there would be no more working from home, there was outrage. Her position (which is shared by many leaders) was that innovation (and the rescue of her company) was not possible without in-person contact in the office. You know, those impromptu hallway/water cooler chats. But part of the backlash was that, as a new mother and the CEO, she had the luxury of putting in a nursery next to her office. This perk wasn’t available to anyone else, and it was seen as her being out of touch with what regular employees needed, wanted or could afford.
13% is the amount an employee’s efficiency can improve when she works from home, according to a 2013 study from Stanford University. The reason for the boost? Relative quiet and fewer sick days taken. (Real Simple, September 2013)
I am not a Millenial, but flexibility appeals to me. That said, working from home all day, every day makes me feel isolated. It’s difficult to feel integrated into a team that you never see and rarely hear. On the flip side, when I worked where my hours were scrutinized and strict, that wasn’t ideal for me either (at that point I was in my early twenties; I think I’d be much more open to it now). I do believe, as the quote above mentions, I can be more efficient when working from home. However, I found that to be the case mostly when I worked from home one to two days a week. I was able to save projects that required concentration and limited interruption for those days, whereas, if I was working on a large and busy spreadsheet, I found it better to work on it from my office where I had multiple monitors.
While I agree that important relationships and creativity are nurtured in the halls and breakrooms, there are also the costs for the company of having a full-time staff at all times. Some companies are cutting costs by encouraging occasional telecommuting with shared desk spaces or a system often called “hoteling” where you can reserve a desk space if you’re going to be in the office. The question, of course, is how do you balance the ROI of flexible workspaces with the ROI of informal innovation. I suspect the answer is different for every company, so the answer is likely the good ole business school answer – “it depends.”
In my experience, there’s a great opportunity for balance. As overhead costs become untenable, employees could share work spaces and coordinate their schedules to work from home two days a week, only overlapping at least one day each week. This allows the flexibility of working from home (potentially increasing productivity by that 13% on those days) at the same time providing the opportunity for those informal conversations to be sparked. This also allows for team meetings to be held on the day(s) of the week where everyone is in the office. If you’ve ever been remotely dialed into a team meeting where you’re one of a few remote people while the rest of the team is in the room, it’s frustrating beyond belief – having everyone in the room at the same time allows for stronger relationships and potentially more efficient meetings, so I will always vote for in-person meetings when available.
A rise in productivity doesn’t mean a promotion, however. According to a recent article in MIT Sloan Management Review, telecommuters move up more slowly than their in-office peers. (Real Simple, September 2013)
Despite the globalized world where telecommuting is more commonplace, the old adage of “out of sight; out of mind” still holds true. Bumping into people in the hall or on your way into the building means that you are front of mind. And let’s be real about it – when you’re front of mind, you’re further up the list for advancement than those who are never physically seen. So while this isn’t terribly surprising, it was not something I was anticipating in my work-from-home job. In my current role, I feel disconnected from the powers that be and have to work extra diligently to ensure that my accomplishments are recognized by those people. Never seeing them in person doesn’t help my cause. Thankfully, I have a very supportive manager who I feel confident sings my praises to his leadership.
As you can see, I don’t have an answer that will work for everyone and every company; I don’t think one size fits all. There are too many factors to have a binary approach to this. Different roles require different amounts of in-office work (e.g. engineers making widgets need to be present to make those widgets), different people function better at the office vs. at home (and vice versa), different industries have differently-evolved philosophies on the matter, and different managers have differing opinions on whether their employees could possibly be working well when not in the office. It’s not an easy decision for a company to make, but I do believe offering some flexibility to allow for working from home occasionally not only allows employees to take care of some things around the house (e.g. waiting for a delivery), but also means that they’ll be in the office some of the time to have that face-time. It seems to me that addresses most/all of the issues brought up by either extreme.
The key, of course, is to evaluate the quality and quantity of work that employees are accomplishing both at work and at home to determine what works best. But that requires a well-honed, advanced, and culturally-ingrained performance management process. But that’s a topic for another post.
CraftFerguson 