As the operational costs are increasing and the overall grim economic situation many companies are either downsizing their operations or are laying off their workforce to cut on costs. There are many companies that are even allowing their employees to work from home in order to cut more costs.
The idea of working from home is called as telecommuting and is a kind of work agreement or arrangement between the employee and the employer.
There are many benefits as well as dangers to letting employees work at home.
The danger of letting employees work at home
Productivity Issue
The first major danger of letting employees work at home is the productivity issue as the company is not able to monitor the movement and daily schedule of the employee. The best thing to do in this case is to issue a company’s computer to the employee so that no other software can be issued other than required for official work and strict timelines are to be set in order for the work to complete in the stipulated deadlines.
Loyalty Towards Work
It is very difficult to judge whether the employees who are working from home are loyal or not because the company cannot see if the employee is also working as part time option option for some other company to earn more money.
Confidential Information
There is one more danger and that is the leakage of confidential information. As the employees who are working at home have the access to secret and confidential information there are always chances that the information might leak and might cause harm to the company or its brand value.
Motivation
The company cannot judge about how much the employee is working and it is very difficult to monitor the employee’s motivation levels.
Sometimes there are chances that these employees might look out for a new job and leave your company.
Overtime is also a major concern for employees working from home as most of the time they deny for overtime and your urgent work becomes pending.
But apart from danger associated with letting employees work at home there are few benefits also such as
- It helps the companies to cut on operational costs.
- There is very less need to downsize or layoff employees.
- It can help the companies to save on the fuel and electricity bills because employees if in office spend electricity and other energy resources.
- Some employees are able to concentrate much better when they are doing their jobs from home and it can act a perfect retention tool for experienced employees.
- Some employees have shown better productivity trends when they started working from home.
Hence will all above said points one can very well judge whether to allow or not about letting their employees work from home. In order to make the entire concept more useful and beneficial the company can seek more clarity by signing a legal document that comprises of all the terms and conditions acceptable by both that is company and the employee.
There are many risks as well as rewards that are in store if you let your employees work from home. It is up to you to finalize about how to take those risks and reap in more and more rewards in the long run.
