Work from Home.

It’s been ages since I have been wanting my dad to switch to a cloth drying mechanism called ‘Easy Dry’. It is a simple pulley based system in which the entire set-up (parallel hollow rods on ropes) curtains down and one can easily put their clothes for drying; instead of using a stick and trying to pluck the stars, a practice my father has been religiously doing since — forever.

But he wouldn’t budge. Upon arguing, he says he has his reasons and comes up with a million creative ones to reject ‘Easy Dry’. To me, it feels like he already knows that he should be moving on but he is unable to tackle his own inertia.

Now you may wonder what this has got to do with Work from Home.You will know.

Today WFH is emerging to be an alternative office space. Thanks to internet, cloud, video calling, wifi and what not, one can be present and be working from far away. In fact, today presence has nothing to do with sharing the same physical space! Of course I am not taking all professions into consideration.

But most IT and design related firms can actually bring it to practice.

There are so many company owners today who are not conscious of this inertia they are facing. Work from home is either looked upon with a lot of suspicion (and they are not to blame because some employees do take undue advantage of it) or is an edge case thing (if employee is sick and there is an important deliverable then perhaps…) Work from home hasn’t gained the focus it should have gained by now.

Here are some of the very visible benefits of WFH

1. No need to travel to work in a city like Mumbai — Lesser traffic, hence lesser pollution, saved fuel and fuel cost. Better world to live in.
2. You feel more relaxed and focussed. You have your cosy corner and perfect work set up, you have the food you like, all you need to care about is your work and how you do it is completely upto you.
3. More responsible behaviour — Because you know you are working from home, you end up feeling more responsible about your deliveries.
4. Personal life is better managed — In between work if you have personal stuff to do, you manage it, that means…no manager micro-managing your life anymore. A happier employee is a better employee.

Concerns that can easily be addressed

1. Managers not having a visibility of the process — catching up once or twice in a week solves the issue
2. Not being able to deliver on time — Regular updates and red flags raised at the right time can give visibility of why the work wasn’t delivered
3. Not having an office atmosphere — One could always make it a second option, the office space will always exist and people will come and go and some might actually choose to come in every day!

I am sure there are many other visible loopholes of this but…

It’s high time we make work from home an official alternative and design methods and processes to optimise it, change the roles and responsibilities of managers to make it more flexible.

It’s time to accept that employees can feel healthier, have a good quality of life and yet be more productive for the company.

It’s high time to take a step back and change the path itself.

It’s high time to be home.

But why aren’t we doing it?

Just because just I may be because nobody knows, nobody, maybe knows how to errr blah.

Exactly why there is no Easy Dry at home.