15 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Let Employees Work From Home

by Korah Morrison on 24/10/12 at 6:56 pm

Let us get one thing straight from the get go–if you offer to allow employees to work from home then every employee you have will volunteer. Many people would offer to work from home for reduced wages, and if you advertised the job you would get thousands of applications. So it does have its up side. Nevertheless, here are fifteen reasons why you may want to think twice before having people working from home.

1 -They can spend their time looking for another job

If they can–then why not? They may even take on a part time job whilst working for you. Who will ever know?

2 – Only a very disciplined mind can resist distractions

The home is full of distractions that will just eat the productive time of your home-based employee.

3 – Many people are not strong willed enough to work a full eight hours every day

It is so easy to do a few hours here and there. Working eight hours every day takes a lot of discipline.

4 – Productivity tends to fall

Home working can result in the worker putting in twelve hours in order to fulfill the work they could do in seven hours. This leads them to start believing that their workload is too much. They start to complain that they are getting more work as a punishment for working at home.

5 – Other staff members become jealous

They will often ask to work from home themselves, and become jealous as they feel that the home workers have an undemanding job. After all – their home is their office.

6 – A home workers appearance may suffer

Working from home removes the cast iron routine of work life. People shave every three days and let their personal appearance standards fall. They become poor public ambassadors for your company and products.

7 – Communication with the staff member becomes more difficult

This is because you cannot do it face to face. The boss/worker interaction dynamic is removed from conversation. It is harder for the boss to identify possible problems that may occur in the future since communication is not as dynamic or “real life”.

8 – Less accountability

Many home workers are less accountable for their work. If their efforts have to be passed onto other workers, then those workers complain to the manager (hopefully) but that criticism rarely gets to the home-worker, and any problems rectification takes longer.

9 – Harder to train

They are not in your presence so you cannot use your own judgment to train your home working staff in any areas that they appear weak.

10 – Harder discipline

A trip to the bosses’ office and a chat is far more effective than a phone call or a list of problems sent via email.

11 – Outsource

In some cases the clever home worker will outsource their job to other people–be they family members, friends or freelancers. This affects their work quality and company commitment. It is hard to stop a worker from doing this.

12 – It is harder to get buy-in

A home worker is not exposed to the workplace atmosphere. This means that any changes have to be explained to the home workers one at a time. They must then be separately convinced of any changes instead of being convinced as a group; thereby it is harder to get them to agree to any changes and plans.

13 – They lose brand loyalty

Why buy your products if nobody at work is going to see them? Why speak well of the brand if there are no repercussions for talking bad about it?

14 – They lose any will to further themselves

They are not going to try to get promoted because they do not want to lose their work-from-home job. They also have no way of showing the bosses how much they want to be promoted.

15 – It is easier to betray you

It is far easier to sell the secrets of a company when you rarely see the boss or do not feel part of the group. What is to stop them from emailing your competitor with their finished workload just after they email you?