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Out of office, lower productivity, says 2014 workplace study


Working from home may not be all it is hyped up to be. Home workers work more hours for not much more pay, and often the over-hours are not compensated for their productivity. For example, if in a 40-hour week, a person works 10-20 hours at home, they may actually be doing more work above their company’s requirements, effectively therefore working for no extra pay. Productivity increases (from the workers' perspective), but does the boss think productivity increases?

Many people take work home and are therefore tending to work “round-the-clock” thus decreasing their hourly take-home pay. While technology enables people to work from anywhere under flexible arrangements, bosses think “out of sight is out of productive mind” - i.e. less productivity.

Workplace researchers, according to the Sydney Morning Herald (January 3-4, 2015) have found that most Australian bosses still believe that physical presence in the office is the best way to get high productivity from their workers.

The University of South Australia’s School of Business – in the Centre for Work and Life – conducted a study that showed most people are working a few extra hours from home on top of their required office work hours. And fewer people are working from home as part of formal arrangements with their boss than expected.

Researcher and adjunct professor, Barbara Pocock, said “informal working-from-home patterns” are growing. She said there has been less flexible official working hour approaches than they expected. It seems as if only 10% of workers do some work at home as an official arrangement, while the majority do it informally and in addition to their regular work hours.

Pocock said the reason bosses are not keen on flexible working hours for their employees (given advances in technology) could be a result of (1) the out-of-sight out-of-touch or out-of-productivity mentality, (2) being present in the workplace is still the dominant culture – i.e. presence equals commitment, and presence equals productivity, or (3) there is a low-trust work environment. But some workers don’t like working a lot of hours at home, as part of an official arrangement, because they are nervous about missing out on information, workplace decisions, and office politics.


However, many workers feel that there productivity increases at home because home-based work cuts down the commute time to the office, there is less distraction, they are more relaxed, and they are happier.




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