Work not from the office - to be or not to be, that is the question

In February 2013, the head of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer decided to return all remote employees to the office.

“Being in Yahoo! does not mean only doing daily work, it is also the interaction of employees, the exchange of experience, which is impossible outside the office "

Those who did not like this decision were asked to write a letter of resignation.

Then this decision was criticized by a number of labor organization specialists, as well as by some well-known businessmen, for example, the head of the Virgin Group, Richard Branson.
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“To work successfully with people, you need to trust them, you need to allow employees to perform their duties where they are comfortable, without constant monitoring and pressure. It helped develop many companies, including Virgin. We have always allowed specialists to work remotely. I myself have never worked in an office and will never do this. What was my surprise when I learned that Marissa Mayer gave the employees an ultimatum - either to return to the office, or leave the company. In an era when working remotely is easier than ever, this is a serious "step back." If employees can constantly keep in touch with each other, and the company allows maintaining the right balance between working in the office and remotely, then people will be motivated to work quickly, responsibly and efficiently. Work from 9 to 5 is gone. ”

Yes, now Yahoo feels much worse than Virgin. But let apologists work from home are not happy ahead of time. Indeed, in the same 2013 CFO Google Patrick Pichette said :

How many people telecommute at Google? Our answer is: As few as possible

And the fact that Google is a very efficient company is unlikely anyone will argue.

First, let's look at the pros and cons of remote work.

Pros:

1. Lower cost of renting an office and additional resources (electricity, internet)
2. Employees do not spend their time and nerves on public / private transport and find themselves in the workplace fresh and rested.
3. Colleagues do not distract with idle talker; noise, laughter, music do not interfere ...
4. There is no limit for the 8-hour working day. In fact, people work much more.

Minuses:

1. At home, a huge amount of distractions. Wives / husbands who need help. Kids to play with. Dogs to walk with. Books to read. TV to watch.
2. About the many problems associated with the evasion of the employee from work, the head can only learn after the fact. Only when in two weeks or a month the project’s deadline comes up, will the manager understand that nothing is ready and the need to take action.
3. As a result, the manager must constantly check the progress of the work of subordinates, or observe what they do with the help of the employee control system.
4. People don't always feel like a team. Yes, there are video conferencing via Skype, any question can be asked in the forum, but working from home is still a form of loneliness.

And here we come to the main thing.



In what conditions the pros take over the minuses?

1. The team must have very motivated employees . They should be interested to solve a specific task on time. Such people do not live for the sake of the workflow, but to achieve a result. The only problem is that there are few such people in our country, and even fewer interesting tasks.
   
   
2. Task control should be automated . And the tasks themselves should be divided into very small blocks of time. As soon as labor productivity decreases, the boss receives a signal and begins to understand the reasons.
   
   
3. The possibility of remote work should be a reward for the employee . They let him go to work home because they trust him and consider him worthy. And not because there are few places in the office and there is a desire to save money.
   
   
4. The man values ​​his reputation . When an employee knows that once having disrupted work on a task, he will lose confidence not only in the current, but also in future employers, he is much more responsible in his work. Alas, but in our country this is not common. Many people treat the recommendations from previous companies with skepticism - someone will say better than they are (so as not to spoil a person’s life), and someone is worse (from the principle of spoiling).

And if you take any large Western company that dismissed employees home, you will see that all the conditions are met.

1. In this company, everyone wants to get a job, so they selected the best, and most importantly, the most enthusiastic.
2. Such a company can offer the most interesting tasks that will truly change the world.
3. All the work of such companies is automated and special systems monitor the progress in project implementation.
4. In Western society, reputation is highly valued and monitored.

Why Yahoo! recalled their fighters back to the office? And just the company has become decrepit, its reputation has faded, the best were lured to Google, the tasks from the interesting have become routine, there was no control system. So I had to go back to office life.

In general, when making a decision about transferring your employees to the “remote”, remember that healthy is good, then sick is poison.