The Hearth As Smithy

• Flexi-timings lead to better productivity, greater employee focus
• Without the need to commute, employees end up saving time, energy and fuel costs
• Possibility of distraction from TV, friends, household chores and family
• Also allows people to bluff and avoid doing their work while at home

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...And Boundwork

• Office discipline results in productivity, says Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayers (Right)
• Offices usually offer better infrastructure than home
• Presence of colleagues and co-workers promotes interaction, new ideas
• Corporate structure typically rewards and promotes people who are in office
   

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Early in the morning, Delhi-based infotech professional Amit Sharma gets ready for work. He goes through the routine, dons a smart shirt, polished shoes, wolfs down breakfast, kisses his wife goodbye...and walks out of the dining room into the spare bedroom. His laptop awaits, his workstation. “I feel I’ve delivered better ideas and solutions than I did when I had to travel two hours to reach office in Gurgaon,” says Sharma, who began wor­king from home five years ago. It’s only the ‘getting ready’ bit, religiously perfor­med, that demarcates it from ‘home’.

There are others (including this wri­ter) who feel they would not get out of bed, leave alone shave, without the familiar edifice of an office to structure or streamline their work day. Really, can one be efficient with the pressure cooker going off in the kitchen and the garbage fellow ringing the doorbell? And yes, there’s also the small matter of ‘discipline’. “In terms of effic­iency and productivity, the boss’s presence is important. You need someone to look over your shoulder,” says Ban­g­alore-based Harish Bijoor.

All of this matters, of course, because Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayers banned the internet giant’s employees from working from home, sparking off a furious debate across cubicles around the world. Studies have shown that companies reward “pre­senteeism” rather than an employee who works from far away. This is particularly true in India, where employees are exp­ected to work long hours and often hang around the office even when they have little work (or lots of time on Facebook). Studies have shown that employees who are more visible get promoted faster than those who work from remote locations (it’s true, out of sight is out of mind).

But do remember, India is in the early stages of the growth led by new-age companies in the internet, technology and telecom sectors, all of which enc­ourage working from home. Many such companies say having employees working from home—consultant is the most popular moniker currently—translates to huge savings in establishment costs. With office real estate costs increasing across cities, many more companies are actively looking at this option.

“There’s no broad-based answer, but we’ve had cases where people were far more productive from home and we have seen lack of productivity in office, where people have become clock-watchers. We are happy to give people the option of working from home,” says Raman Roy, bpo entrepreneur and chairman, Quattro Global Services. Many also cite the time, energy and money saved in commuting, especially in bigger and crowded cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. The recurring fuel costs, the sheer frustration of navigating tough traffic—none of it is conducive to creating a good workday.

HR heads of new economy firms in India feel it doesn’t pay to be rigid either way. That’s why many top companies give employees a choice to work from home—as long as targets and deadlines are met and employees are available for physical meetings when required. Says former Infosys HR head Hema Ravi­chandar,  “Companies cannot operate at either extreme—complete flexibility or none at all. Work-from-home policies must be balanced with mandated face time so that teams are able to resolve issues effectively and speedily.”

So companies are veering around to the view that while in-person meetings are essential, work-from-home and other flexible options ensure work spaces are more creatively deployed and employees can eliminate the unproductive aspects from their workday. Of course, industry leaders are not necessarily interested in flexiwork options for their own sake. They are nat­urally keen that employees be enabled to maximise productivity—ergo, clear identification of “progress milestones” and “performance metrics” is critical. Managers also need to be trained to handle virtual teams.

Till recently, working from home had a different context in India—“sitting at home” was construed as not working at all and being unemployed. Now, with many companies allowing flexitime, it is increasingly getting acceptable. “On an average, productivity for any given individual would be high at home as there are fewer disturbances. At office, there are loud talking colleagues, someone asks you out for that coffee you can’t refuse and the boss often calls to chat about something,” says Devangshu Dutta, writer and consultant.

The work-from-home debate also runs smack into a parallelly growing concern in bigger cities about the security and safety of women. With governance failures in keeping violence off the streets, women are quitting jobs where they are needed to work late. As a result, companies are often encouraging them to work from home. Says Supreme Court lawyer Karuna Nundy, “The attrition rate among women from, say, top law schools is very high. They enter litigation and law firms in large numbers and drop out on their way to the top because a disproportionate share of housework, childcare and eldercare is still thrust on them regardless of interest and earning potential.”

Obviously, working from home cannot be for everyone. Even seasoned home-based professionals often lament the lack of an office environment—the sheer group dynamics that drives creativity. Says Joyjeet Mukherjee, an infotech professional who has been working from home for the last five years while his wife has been doing this since 2005, “There is a strong social element in office which helps you network with people. At home you don’t have colleagues to interact with. Also, if you are stuck you can seek help from your colleagues. At home, you are on your own.”

In an age where technology makes geographical location irrelevant and where a person’s whereabouts and his work can be traced anywhere round the clock in an always-online scenario, the debate over whether or not to allow working from home seems quite futile. But if Marissa Mayers uses an office-is-supreme approach and manages to transform a floundering Yahoo’s fortunes, then who knows, we could all be attending many meetings and coffee breaks while bitching about the terrible traffic on the way to work.