Work From Home !!

City of Pune, India. Population more then three million. One of the several cities of India where IT is gaining grounds. New offices of MNC's are rising each day and with them other thousands of business. The city which was once famous for its history, Maratha rule and National defense academy is now creating millions of jobs for Indians.

Roads are packed, noisy and polluted whole day, Crocodile seems to beat traffic in morning and evening hours. And this is the story of just one of several second tier cities, the problem is even worse in Mumbai situated some kilometers away, And it's world wide.

Although i agree that progress is important and inevitable, But perhaps this is time when we start thinking about some alternate ways to do the daily chores of life. Going to work each morning is a tradition we are following from hundreds of years. While it's logical efficient and productive but not for all cases. there are jobs which can be done from home entirely or partially with the help of communication technologies.

Even if we manage to shift 10 percent of our working population to home (which is not as hard as it sounds), Millions of vehicles will go off the road, billions of dollars will be saved daily due to less consumption of fossil fuel not only due to less vehicles but also because of less Jams and smooth traffic. Tons of carbon die oxide emission will reduced.



I am not good at statics but i think it's not easy to judge the relaxation some of us will get when we don't have to spend two hours daily in traffic just waiting for the next car to push the accelerator, The amount of time millions of human beings will get to spend with family while working.

Oh sounds interesting !! But what's there for Employers? What about productivity loss? And the infrastructure needed?  the security issues? And isn't many companies doing the same? All these questions are logical, needs attention, and i don't have a fully baked solution for all of them but some ideas.

To start, Many companies are using this successfully, but not to the extent, At-least not in this part of earth. Employers will have there share of profits too. first they don't have to spend heavily on costly work space. Employees can be encouraged to use there own computing and communication devices for work. Reducing the cost even further. And if a project is managed by multiple locations then an employee is as good at home as at office. the lines between office hours and personal time will get blurred so employees will be more willing to give some  extra time for an emergency job. The work location will go global, So no more headache of finding a resource with specific skills within the city walls. Employees will not ask for extra leaves just because they are going out-station. And most important of all people will be more satisfied with there employers and therefore more willing to provide there service loyally.

Although there is some research needed in this area. for example project flow frameworks which suits better in this kind of environment. The kind of jobs which can be done most effectively. And to what extent a kind of project can be shifted to home, Security of sensitive data, As well as communication technologies which can make it possible and effective by providing software and connectivity in such a way that location difference can not be felt much.

In addition governments could also provide some tax and other benefits to organizations which encourage a significant percent of there employees to work from home and thereby contribute to solving all these problems at once.

Although even after all of these, majority of employees working from home is not going to be possible in near future, But most of us will be convinced by now that even a small percentage will make a huge difference.

"At the end whatever progress we made or whatever we wanna do should be intended to benefit the human beings."

Comments

Anonymous said…
Agreed

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