WFH a.k.a. ‘work from home’ culture is slowly gaining popularity in Indian sub continent. Soon those days will be gone where an employee had to give excuses of medical reasons or some emergency to work from home. WFH is now accepted by most of the companies, especially IT sectors. Many times WFH helps to maintain work-life balance and helps to enhance productivity.

WFH concept works typically for people who do not have to interact or there is minimal interaction with others in the company. These people have to work on laptop using the local software installed on the laptop. One of the important ways WFH helps is by saving on travel time especially in big cities like Mumbai. The amount of time spent travelling from home to office and back is equivalent to 40% of the time you spend in an office. Normally an employee spends minimum 8 hours a day in office and almost 3 hours additional for the travelling. So yes, WFH helps people to spend more time with the family while working 8 hours a day. 

The type of hectic life we live and the amount of time we spend away from family (for work matters) is affecting lot of people by spoiling their relationships with family members. Lots of companies are getting complaint from employees and many times the main reason being citied by an employee for quitting is the time lost travelling in a day. So companies like Microsoft, DELL, IBM have acknowledged WFH and think that this helps in the retention of good resources by giving option of better work-life balance.

The WFH culture picked up momentum from last 5-6 years in India, although other countries like US have been doing this for more then a decade. WFH can be most beneficial to female employees who have lot of other responsibilities at home like taking care of kids as well as other domestic chores.

WFH is not feasible for all sectors. Only people with minimum personal interaction required can use this facility. On the flipside some companies like Yahoo do not acknowledge the WFH culture and think that face to face interaction as well as the office environment helps in getting better productivity from an employee instead of sitting at home and working.

Indian companies still cannot digest this culture and hence many or rather most Indian organizations do not accept WFH offer.

My personal view is that WFH culture should be allowed as it helps to save time as well as balance family life too. And yes if allowed by the organisation then an employee has to seriously follow it, the reason I am mentioning this is because we Indians take everything for granted.

Does your organisation allow WFH culture? What are your views on it?