What’s stopping you from working at home?
So you’ve just landed yourself a sweet new job, Congratulations! The pay is good and it comes with a whole bunch of benefits, it doesn’t get much better than this. So you’re settling in, things have been going well for a few months now but, disaster! The boilers just given up and the repair man has said he can only make it out on Tuesday sometime between 7am and 5pm. No problem, you’ll just work from home then, right? Wait, you can’t? Oh…
When it comes to working flexibly, it’s not always about job shares and drastic changes to our work lives, sometimes all we need is the opportunity to work from home once in awhile. The benefit of being able to work from home is quickly becoming one of the more sought after perks for millennials as the need for work-life balance becomes apparent for us all. So why is it that this seemingly simple perk is still being overlooked?
There’s a whole list of reasons that companies give for not allowing their employees to work from home but trust is one we see crop up the most. The fear of the unknown of what your employees are up to when they’re not in the office can really worry an employer. It’s such a worry in fact that some major companies who used to allow working from home have recently made u-turns on their approach, taking the privilege away (Yahoo and Best Buy in the US to name a few).
Obviously, trust was never part of the statement as to why this privilege was removed. Yahoo instead cited “better collaboration” as one of their reasons which, I’ll begrudgingly admit, may be right. Studies have shown that being in the office with colleagues is one of the key driving forces for innovation, so is it right to just take this blanket approach and ban working from home all together? I, for one, don’t think so.
Looking into other studies, we’ve also found that employees who are given the chance to work from home part of the time are actually happier, more productive and tend to be more more loyal. So what’s the right answer? As an employer, what should your stance be?
For us here at ShareYourJob, the answer seems clear, both are right. The collaborative nature of meeting and conversing with your colleagues will always be best in the office, but with so few distractions at home we really have a better chance to get things done. This best of both worlds approach doesn’t just work for the employee, but gets better results for the employer too.
So if flexibility is better for everyone, all we’re left with is the issue of trust. But if you can’t trust your employees to work when you're not watching them, why hire them in the first place?
If you’re looking for a job on a flexible job share basis, be sure to check out what we have to offer!