Can Working From Home Work For You?

As the economy continues to strengthen, companies will be looking for creative ways to retain their top talent. A tactic that has been used recently to keep top performers is to provide flexibility in the workplace. One way to provide flexibility is to allow employees to work from home. However, utilizing telecommuters has not been an easy transition for employers, as well as employees.

Employers are still attempting to understand if working from home is beneficial. Take for instance Yahoo. One of the first items Marissa Meyer did when she took over as Yahoo’s CEO was to end Yahoo’s work from home program. 

But why?

Those against telecommuting feel it:

• May actually hurt productivity. It requires enormous amounts of motivation and self-discipline.
• Can be isolating. The employee will be removed from a collaborative team environment. In some situations, a telecommuter may be removed from human interaction all together.
• Makes it difficult to obtain validation from co-workers.
• Becomes hard to separate work tasks from personal chores.

Despite the above deterrents, the proportion of employees throughout the United States who primarily work from home has more than tripled over the past 30 years. Therefore it is easy to assume that employees are seeing the value in telecommuting.

So what is the value?

Those who believe telecommuting can be great feel it provides:

• A quieter work environment
• Increased productivity
• No commute - saving time and gas
• A cost savings for the employer
• A larger talent pool for the employer to dip into
• A less stressful environment

This all make sense…why can’t you start letting employees work from home today?

Telecommuting cannot be successful in a silo. In order for a work from home program to succeed, a company must embody the following:

• Strong leadership
• Clearly communicated goals and benchmarks: This will allow employees to focus on the task at hand.
• The right fit: Employees that are self-motivated and can thrive working from home.
  

So how do you implement a new program while mitigating the risk in the event it does not work?

Working from home likely will not be a good arrangement for every employee. To ease your company into a new telecommuting policy try rolling out trial periods. Have an employee start working from home 1-2 days a week and review his/her performance regularly.

With telecommuting opportunities steadily growing, it is no surprise that employees, as well as employers, are going to continuously analyze the pros and cons of working from home.