Why Singapore must seriously mull over 'home working' employees

Thanks to Yahoo CEO Melissa Meyer there is now a raging debate about whether employees are more effective working from home or whether more creativity flows from people working together at work.

The argument for working from the office includes the fact that you can see all your employees actually “working” – or at least at their desk updating Facebook anyway. They are not doing home chores or taking the afternoon off to visit the cinema or mall. People who don’t let people work from home tend to have trust issues and believe that if you can’t see them working they must not be working.

This, to me, reflects a lack of confidence in a person’s management style and a lack of confidence in the employees desire to be motivated to work hard for the company. This is not solved by making people work in an office. One of the main arguments for ensuring that people are actually in the office is “serendipity” – the importance of unexpected connections and discussions which lead to amazing ideas that would never have been thought of without that “chance” encounter.

Many would argue that this is very hard to prove but nonetheless I can vouch for many a discussion with a colleague/business partner/client where a fantastic idea sprung from the conversation. However I would argue that this happened at any meeting anywhere and does not need for people to be in the actual office for it to happen.

In fact the best ideas have often come over drinks of one form or another! In Yahoo’s case this seems to have gone to the extreme. People were “working” from home so much that they had second jobs and didn’t know who their colleagues were! The chance of anything therefore coming out of discussions between employees about Yahoo!‘s business was non-existent.

Yahoo!’s focus appears to be on creativity and new ideas for Yahoo! itself rather than clients/partners. This is not surprising given the state of Yahoo! before Melissa came along. Many would argue that what she has actually done is merely focus the company in one direction and rather like a football team she has got everyone on the pitch playing the same way and creating a team work ethic and vision that results in shared goals being scored. Hard to do if you’re on different pitches playing different games.

The scientific Allen Curve shows how office collaboration decreases the farther away workers sit. This doesn’t mean that people have to sit together at work, merely sit near each other in a venue or presumably on Skype exchanging ideas. The arguments for working from the office includes a recent survey by Staples that demonstrate that:

• 37% of businesses with telecommuting programs report less absenteeism

• Nearly one quarter of businesses reduce their real estate costs

• 75% of business decision makers notice happier employees

• 93% of those employees surveyed agree that telecommuting programs are mutually beneficial

• 53% of business decision makers state that telecommuting leads to more productive employees.

Home working to me also includes café/Starbucks working too and Starbucks would cease to exist if it wasn’t for the “home working” that goes on away from the office at the local café.

In fact a recent survey reported that people are more creative in a coffee shop that an open plan office due to the low level noise – there isn’t any in most open plan offices! Headphones rules in offices these days where everyone is scared of being too loud on a phone call or discussion, knowing that everyone is listening to them.

This does not make for much in the way of “office collaboration”. Remove them and people who like the buzz of music would go mad with the library like silence that you can experience in any open plan office in Singapore. I think home working effectively comes down to personal choice.

There has been another survey which says that men are better than women at working at home as women get distracted and end up doing other things….I can’t believe that men don’t too…that XBOX is just there tempting you to play with it! In a recent event there was a panel titled “Your Desk Job Makes You Fat, Sick and Dead!" Great headline. Sounds like the latest punk band from Seattle! This amongst other panels discussed how sitting too long is bad for you and that workers should move around, have stand up desks and ergonomically designed chairs to encourage blood flow which in turn stimulates the mind and makes people more productive at work (or in fact at home).

Whether you work from home or in a conventional office you still need to protect yourself and look after yourself. Everyone thinks that just because they work from home it means that they can just use their dining table chair or sofa to work on. These people soon realize this doesn’t work from a back or effectiveness point of view! Wherever you work you still need to have the most conducive working environment that is right for you, everyone is different. What do you think Singapore? Home working or telecommuting?