Everyone knows the benefits and attractions of working from home. Given a choice, and chance, who would say no to this ideal way of working.

Unfortunately though, working from home has recently got itself a bad name. We would not go right out and say that the concerns are unsubstantiated. What must be understood, however, is that many, if not all, of the apprehensions, are based on assumptions and perhaps a small percentage of possible fiascos.

A whopping 90% of employees are keen on this policy at work, while there is still tremendous resistance from nearly 75% of the employers.

A look at the graph below will indicate that most of the fears are founded on conjecture. 70% of employers feel that working from home hampers productivity, while 44% of employees feel that personal productivity gets a boost when working from home.

Employer Challenges

Many employers have a fear of feeling out of control. Nearly 40% of employers feel that working from home leads to lack of control. 1 out of every 4 employers also believes that not many jobs are truly meant for a work-from-home arrangement. The last proverbial nail in the coffin for a work from home arrangement is the lack of support from management. Nearly 30% of employers cite resistance from within the organization and majority of them feel that working from home hampers productivity.

Employer Benefits

On the flipside, a sizeable number of employers are in favor of this policy. 40% of employers feel that allowing employees to work from home helps improve the company’s brand, and 30% of employers say that it helps curb attrition a feeling. 24% of employees surveyed said work from home helps them have better work-life balance and increased productivity.

Before concluding, either way, it is important to recognize and appreciate the fact that these beliefs are hinged on assumptions and feelings, and have no basis in any facts whatsoever.

Here’s some proof.

At Sapience, we have always endeavored to help people and organizations move from assumption-driven management to evidence-based management. So we took it upon us to break this myth once and for all.

We developed a new feature in our productivity software that enables us to capture work trends based on location. We can now assess how work happens when people are in the office as against how it happens when they are at home; this is an automated feature and does not require any user input.

We did a study, and the results were astounding.

Working from home increased on-PC project time by 2 hours and employees also spent 1.8 more hours on core activities at home than they did at their workplace.

This changes and challenges many assumptions that employers have been holding on to.

Is it time to let people have the flexibility to work from home? Can data and people analytics facilitate this transition while addressing the concerns of the employers?

We see that the trend is being embraced by some organizations, like Amazon, Cigna Healthcare, Aetna, and Dell. However, a majority of these are still transactional & repetitive work. At Sapience, we have proved that even knowledge workers can work from home while addressing the concerns that the employers/managers have. Managers/Employers get the data they need to measure effort and productivity of employees irrespective of where they work from.

To learn more about how we facilitate embracing work from home, please visit https://d824jnzl62zcj.cloudfront.net/people-analytics-work-from-home-software-tool