The big, burning question on everyone's mind seems to be: should employees be allowed to work from home?
Our take? The answer is NO!
Employees should be able to decide how, when, and where the work gets done. Period.
Turning the conversation into a simple "work from the office vs. work from home" argument is totally missing the point. Working from home gives employees a small taste of freedom (while making bosses nervous) but it is still a system in which you're managing people, not work.
In order to truly drive results and focus on what's really important, you need to manage the work, not the people.
Working from home still has all the basic stone-age baggage of a traditional work environment. People are still expected to work "business hours." They still need to "check in" to show activity. They are still bound to a schedule that might define which days they get to work from home. It's sometimes offered to a select few but not everyone. In short, telework is still a way of managing people.
ROWE is not "working from home." ROWE is not a flexible work arrangement.
ROWE is a cultural shift that takes the focus off of managing people and places it onto managing the work. After all, the work is what matters, right?
We need to change the national conversation. We need to stop focusing on this short-sighted question of "should employees be allowed to work from home?" and focus it on what matters: the work itself.
It’s time to move from location based thinking (working from home) to outcome based thinking (working for results).