Things to Consider Before Letting Employees Work From Home

Almost all of the world had been compelled to work from home due to the fast-rising severity that the COVID-19 virus was. As a result, what was previously an experiment by a few and popular among a small percentage of working professionals has now become a reality for the great majority. This dramatic transformation in how we operate has proved that working from home is here to stay and that the hybrid model is the future of business operations.

While most people began working from home with the expectation that it would be a temporary situation, it has had a significant influence on how we perform as individuals and as a team. As a result, in this YouTube video on the Harvard Business Review channel, Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom offers a few points that businesses should consider before allowing their employees to choose work from home vs work from office.

What to consider before letting employees work from home

Nicholas recommends that the first point that establishes against allowing employees to fully pick which days are mixed mode is that it divides the staff into two teams called in-groups and out-groups, making one of them feel devalued. One group that frequently feels underappreciated is the group of workers who opt to work from home, which is especially damaging to a business.

Second, Nicholas indicates that this separation may have a negative impact on diversity. This is because, according to him, organizations prefer to promote individuals who work from the office over those who work from home the bulk of the time in a week.

Since it is clearly impossible for firms to eliminate remote work, Nicholas proposes two approaches: team-based and centralized. To prevent dividing the team into two groups, Nicholas advises that either the team members jointly determine which days they will all work from home or that the company do it for them.

Allowing team members to do this, however, has significant drawbacks, such as the possibility of various members choosing different days and being able to find a medium ground. As a result, firms must determine how many fixed days workers have to work from home and what days they require to show their presence in the office.

Although working from home has proven to be one of the most productive business methods, it does come with difficulties. As a result, businesses must evaluate these disadvantages before allowing workers to choose whether or not to work from home, a few of which are described above in the article.