Indians disapprove of Yahoo's back-to-office plan

Globally, as much as 25% of workforce has the flexibility to work away from office

Indians are yet to adopt work-from-home culture as many still prefer to step into their office desks and saunter into boss' cabins. But they too, do not agree with IT giant Yahoo's recent to cancel working from home saying that face-to-face interactions work better in nurturing innovation.

Productivity and cost-efficiency, however is higher from those who work from home, say Indian HR experts.

“It will be wrong to say the model has failed. For IT companies, it provides flexibility to the workforce and reduces real estate and establishment costs. Intangibles like team building through face-to-face interactions and problems that working from home may lead to in an organisational network, are often cited as reasons against work from home policy,” said E Balaji, MD & CEO of human resources firm Randstad India.

Globally, as much as 25 per cent of workforce has the flexibility to work away from office. The number are much lower in India. Some experts also say that there is a difference between the concept of work-from-home in the US and the one in India. In the US some people work remotely away from office and they might not visit physical office for 6-9 months.

Surabhi Mathur Gandhi, senior vice president TeamLease Services explained that though the work from home model hasn't failed, reliance on work from home in physical projects has reduced. In these cases, owing to geographical distance and confidentiality of information, companies have converted these profiles to work from office.  "So, the question here is how each company is deploying their talent. For physical projects and functions, work from home is not given. Work from home is only given for non critical roles," she said.

IT companies are the ones which have most of them employees away from office. But they too restrict the time that employees stay away from office.

Mphasis, an IT services company says that work-from-home should ideally be used as a short-term exigency. “We allow our people to work for 10 days from home and that is the maximum we provide. It is a planned activity which needs necessary approvals from the managers,” said Dnyan Shah, Senior Vice-President, HR, Mphasis. And when done in a systematic manner, it believes that it  helps both employees as well as the company.

Internet company Directi also allows employees to work from home, but only when they are 'really in need' of it. “For all the system there are pros and cons, in work place it is easy for employees to collaborate and there will be a synergy. But we believe the employees and their issues are really important for us,” said Margret Redrigues, Senior manager HR, Directi.

According to a research report in Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Management Review, remote working is a non-traditional arrangement, and can have hidden pitfalls. “Employees who work remotely, may end up getting lower performance evaluations, smaller raises and fewer promotions than their colleagues in the office – even if they work just as hard and just as long,” the report said.