Work From Home Policy : Good or Bad For Productivity?

I will like to present both aspects-

Bad for productivity:
"Work from home" is something less professional, the environment we get in office is better "for work" than in home.When we work in a office,we are socially more active,we can discuss work related issues with our colleagues and learn to work under pressure.

Good for productivity:
For more ideas to develop in mind and to be more innovative we need to be in a comfortable and peace state of mind and we all know there is no place like home to be comfortable.There is no pressure,yes,deadlines exist but nothing like continuous pressure.And most important,we can plan our breaks!😀

The_Big_KWork from home isn't very popular in India yet; but as far as I know, it's existed in developed countries for a long time. What's your opinion?

A research worker is almost always at work wherever that person is.
Where the work involves special equipment or infrastructure working from home is obviously not possible. If the work involves only the individual, a computer and a good broad band connection, working from home can be an option. This assumes that the worker is committed and not faffing.
My nephew, who used to work with IBM in the states now works from home (actually he has rented another flat). He does visit to other units when needed. The downside? His pay is half of what he was getting in the US for the same work. He is happy.

Indian Companies by and large lags innovation because employees spend four hours of commuting every day in major cities. Secondly at work place there is a species called managers who are hired by company to kill your thoughts when you are deep into it.

If I ever need to work for a company, my first prerequisite will be to work from home, away from stupid managers (salary will come later). Productivity comes from peace of mind not from cafeteria. Everyone knows this.

Yahoo is dead. It's CEO knows it. This is just another way of layoff people without paying them compensation. To my estimate 15% of US employees are going to leave.


In India every logic of life seems to be screwed up. You have servants for all house work, now even for cooking, you have someone looking after your kids so that you can be in job. And people love it. It gives them a reason to be away from their duty.

Myself being completely against the philosophy of human slavery of any form, have to do every house hold along with my wife. Be it cooking, cleaning, washing, looking after baby. Working from home is the only option to me.

If you are building a society where parents leaves their kids to servants for 8 hours a day, you are messing up with future badly.

#-Link-Snipped-# - several points you've raised could become debate topics here. I was once speaking with a CEO of a successful company and he basically told me never to gather people together - because they'll kill time. This CEO himself has had a team of 400+ people and had just sold his company for several millions.

The focus of this debate is on whether people tend to be productive if they're given the freedom to choose where they work from.

What I've experienced is that if people are made to 'sit at a place called office', they'll work more than asked to deliver their tasks on their own working from home. But that works differently for different people. There are people who'd produce 10x output if given freedom to choose their work location - either office, home, coffee shop and so on.

#-Link-Snipped-# - for a researcher or scientist - of course location may play an important role. If you need access to lab equipment, you'll have to be present in the lab. But given the nature of most of the professionals, which happens on computer - do you have any specific experiences / observations to share about working from home vs. working from office?

What I've experienced is that if people are made to 'sit at a place called office', they'll work more than asked to deliver their tasks on their own working from home.

This is what happens in most cases, which is the norm for people for whom bread winning is the reason. The deliverables are to the paymaster.

There are people who'd produce 10x output if given freedom to choose their work location - either office, home, coffee shop and so on.

When one is passionate about the work and the deliverables are to oneself (even if the fruits of it go to a paymaster), then the other thing above applies.

Even for a scientist, (not a career one - the office option is better for these) the output is more when alone. In any case a lab is not an office. There you are alone with some equipment instead of a workstation. The office is a distraction. Too many interruptions. Unrelated issues take up time. Invariably one gets called to some meeting, where nothing much gets done.

Home for the loner and office for the routine. Creativity is tilling a lone furrow.

In the final analysis, office is the best option for most activities.

I personally feel that working from home is better if you are designing or doing something creative. However, the logical work could be done in an office or as a team outside the premises of the office. Monitoring and Analysis jobs require an office however as people won't work effectively from home. Any work when carried on for continuous time leads to boredom. So enough freedom should be given to the employee to gain maximum output. And as #-Link-Snipped-# sir said, there is no end to learning.

P.S.: Some Government jobs are so boring that I've seen people sit simply from morning through evening without doing any work at some government offices. Why does this happen in India?

Well, this work from home has pros and cons.

For some people its good for some its bad. And creative people can work from anywhere. I still remember my technical manager used to work with us and help us in the project. many times he got stuck in some module, he could not get the clue for entire day, but while having dinner, his mind triggered the solution, and it happened number of times, sometime on the way going back to home, etc.

If you don't have any such policy in your organization, then you have a fixed routine, i.e. get up at 8 or 8:30 am(it depends how far is your office) and make it to the office and starting working from 9:30 or 10 am.

If company has a policy for work from home, then many works religiously according to the regular routine, but sometime or out of 10 days, 3 or 4 days they may think, let me sleep for another 30 minutes or an hour or if they have to start working at 9:30 am, then they might log in at 9:30 immediately after getting out of the bed without taking bath or brushing teeth, without having any sort of breakfast because no one is there to check what you are doing . I think in this way if we work, we won't feel that freshness which is needed to work. I am saying this because my friends used to work from home, they used to just wake up and switch the computer ON, then go to the bathroom after logging into the required systems, communicator status "busy" 😁

Update:

We've had this discussion back in 2013 and now it's 2017! A lot's changed in these years and the biggest of them all is the nationwide availability of 4G network at very cheap rates.

A lot of companies, including CrazyEngineers, look for talent no matter where it's located a long as they've access to the Internet. In fact, all of our author team works remotely from various parts of India and it works pretty well. It'd not be possible, if we insisted on finding talent locally.

Do you think things have changed in the recent times? I look forward to your thoughts.

I have seen many who sometimes, most of the times and all the time work from home. They will not do productive work. Infact it wastes the company's time and their time as well. Work from home for a day or two is fine but not at all encourageable in a country like India.