Work from home gets popular with employees, but bosses still wary

The trend of professionals working from home is picking pace, but their managers are still apprehensive about its supposed benefits, shows a new survey by JobBuzz, an employer-rating platform powered by TimesJobs.com.

What is heartening to note is that managers are
slowly losing their apprehensions as shown by the fact that in the recent JobBuzz survey, 30% of employees say they are allowed to work from home for at least twice a week. In a similar survey conducted in 2014, only 10% employees had claimed they had been allowed to work from home.

But there still remains a stigma attached to work-for-home flexibility. While there has been an uptake in the number of employees working from home, managers are still quite unsure about making it a norm. In the latest JobBuzz.in survey, nearly 60% employees say their bosses still frown upon the culture of working remotely.

While there have been numerous studies stating the obvious benefits of promoting a remote workforce - Higher productivity has been voted as the top advantage by 44% employees. But employees admit there are distractions when doing office work from home.

More than 60% employees say attending to household chores is the biggest interruption they face while working from home. This is followed by interference from family members or children. Citing these distractions, 20% of the surveyed employees say they feel more productive at office than at home. Interestingly, 42% of the employees say they are productive no matter where they are working from –home or office.

“While managers may have their doubts about work-from-home, it has become a major criterion for today’s new-age professionals while deciding about joining a company and their career growth. Employers have to see work from home as a tool in the employer branding arsenal to pull in talent that may otherwise go to other companies or startups, which are defined by their workplace flexibilities,” says Vivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.com.

View from the other side
Bosses too have their reasons for not encouraging work from home. 32% feel such a policy leaves less time for face-to-face interaction and synergy, which is crucial in critical roles, especially in product and technology.

Also, 28% managers feel employees are less productive when they work from home while 24% cite difficulty in staying connected as the major drawback of a work-from-home culture. For 16% managers, attitudinal issues pose a big hurdle in allowing employees to work remotely.

"While there are valid points both for and against flexi-working, there are many possible solutions available to cross these hurdles. A proper employee tracking mechanism is one strategy that can help employers get over their hesitation in allowing remote work policies. However, only 30% employees in our JobBuzz survey stated their organizations have any such strategy in place,” says Vivek Madhukar, COO, TimesJobs.com.

This JobBuzz.in survey was conducted across 1,123 working professionals across India.