If you browse the internet, you will find a lot of articles about home-office and remote work. Some will try to demonize working from home, while others will say it is the solution for everything in the contemporary world. I will use my 6-year experience of remote work at IBM to try to explain why both extremes are wrong.
The perk myth
First of all, working from home (WFH) is not a perk or benefit. It is a business model. I’ve seen many managers and employees approach WFH as some sort of benefit provided by the employer, often in the same category as free food or health insurance. This is plain wrong.
If employers see WFH as a perk, they will fail to take it seriously and be blind about the benefits that this business model brings to both companies and employees. On the other side, employees who see WFH as a perk will believe it is another item in their package of benefits provided by the company, and will be very annoyed if that is taken away.
So, before even trying to think about WFH, bear in mind that it is a business model. It is another way of working.
Working from home is work
The ‘working’ part of WFH is still work, meaning that employees who are in their home-offices have to behave professionally during the work hours. This means employees have to:
- have a proper office at home, and not a bed office. The photo that illustrates this post is my home-office during my IBM days.
- dress for work, no PJs.
- have a work routine.
- be available online and/or the phone.
- on time for conference calls.
In order to accomplish all that, people have to be disciplined and organized. Of course, flexibility allows employees to do other things like going to the bank, or picking up children at school, but remember that everyone still has to get work done. WFH should never be an excuse for procrastinating.
In my particular case, I would set a list of tasks and priorities everyday (see my article about productivity for more information) and work through it. I didn’t have a routine and took the liberty of doing whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, but in the end of the day I had to finish my deliverables. That was my mental control. Being in control of the delivery deadlines is key for not getting sidetracked by any distractions.
Managers should not be micromanagers. They should focus on results, not fine control. This is true (and obvious) even in a traditional office, but much more important in this scenario because interruptions kill productivity. If the results are not coming, then it is time for an honest talk — a lot of people do not have the proper discipline and cannot WFH.
When I was managing the releases of the IBM Advance Toolchain for PowerLinux, I would not see my team members in person for days (sometimes, never, as we were a worldwide team). However, I would not ping them to check on how their work was going on a daily basis — that’s what the weekly scheduled status meetings were meant for. Instead, I chose to communicate through the processes and tools, and trust the team that they would deliver everything on schedule (and they did).
WFH requires discipline and organization from employees, mutual trust between managers and employees, and proper processes, tools and infrastructure provided by the company.
Fact: working from home usually increases productivity
Studies have shown that employees who WFH are more productive, happier and less likely to quit. Some skeptical managers may argue that this is impossible since there are too many distractions at home: family, pets and that shiny new PlayStation 4
From my experience, I would say that offices are much more distracting environments, especially those with open floor plans — lots of people talking and walking by, too much noise, and interruptions that you cannot avoid without being rude.
If you have ever worked in a closed office (at home or in a traditional office environment), you know that once you close the door and start doing things, you won’t stop until it is done. Absence of noise and solitude are key for actually getting work done. The period of my professional life I was more productive (and had the best performance reviews) was the one I worked from home.
So, you may be asking: if it is all that great, why would anyone be against sending everyone home? And here we come to the disadvantages…
Working from home impacts collaboration
The main reason I would object against a 100% WFH business model is that isolation kills collaboration. Ideas flow much faster and intensely when people are banging their heads together at the office. So for creative and knowledge workers, WFH 5 days a week is not a good idea.
It is much easier to bounce ideas with someone you know personally. Breaking the ice is essential to build great teams, and having everyone together at the office will accomplish that. Furthermore, no matter how brilliant people are, they will always achieve better (and faster) results working together as a team, and they will need some time together in order to create tight bonds.
So, if you work in a 100% WFH business model, make sure you go to the office a few times a month to keep the bonds tight and the ideas flowing. As a manager, you should always encourage the team to meet often.
At IBM, whenever I felt we needed to brainstorm about a problem, I opted to get the team together and bounce ideas around. The solutions would come much faster than on an IRC chat or a conference call.
For more mechanical / repetitive work, a 100% WFH business model should work fine, though, and it should be taken into account especially due to the reduced costs with office space, furniture and infrastructure.
Working from home kills corporate culture
This is often an argument used by bad managers at companies that have no culture at all to deny the WFH business model. Still, this is true, and if your company has a very strong culture, like IBM, Apple or Google, going to the office will speed up the process of absorbing it all. It takes at least one year working on site to absorb a mature corporate culture, so I believe that employees should not be allowed to WFH until this soaking-in process has ended.
For startups, I don’t think there is an alternative. Until the culture is well defined and absorbed by all workers, there is no way a WFH model will be beneficial in that regard.
Working from home is bad for networking
Like I said in my career article, you will need good networking to unlock the best opportunities. When working remotely 100% of time, you will need much more effort in order to keep your network alive and well.
We are social beings, and people need social contact. That’s why even if you WFH 100% of time, you should go to the office sometimes for some hallway talk and to meet people outside your team.
Remember: if your work is only known to the people you work with, how are you going to get pulled into other opportunities outside your world?
The best approach: a hybrid model
So far, we have seen that WFH has advantages and disadvantages. How can we leverage it?
I work with creative and knowledge workers developing software, so the collaboration part is very important in this business. The natural thing to do would be going Yahoo all the way and ban telecommuting. However, controlling things usually has nothing to do with the things being controlled, but with control itself. That said, I think WFH should be allowed and it is up to the company to create a nice office environment that employees will go because they want to, not because they are forced to. This way, your company may benefit from both sides: great collaboration while at the office, great productivity when people are busy doing their stuff, happier employees and low attrition. Having a work-life culture also helps.
When allowing employees to optionally WFH, managers must be clear about the rules. Those include at minimum:
- the employee having the proper infrastructure to work at home — desk and chair, broadband connection, phone, etc.
- the employee being available online or on the phone.
- the company providing the necessary infrastructure on its side — VPN, cloud, messaging, VoIP, etc.
- team meetings at the office whenever necessary. No one wants to work with cavemen.
Managers also should not be micromanagers. Have clear processes and control the results, not the work.
And, of course, employees need to be professional and responsible. The key for this model to work is trust. And if you don’t trust your employees, you should start reviewing your hiring process.
This article was originally posted on LinkedIn.