According to figures from Statistics Netherlands of over 8 million employees, nearly 3 million works from home. 62% say that they work from home on an incidental basis. Since last year there is even a law that gives employees more opportunities to work for their time also from home. For a long time, work from home has been celebrated: less office space, less file pressure, motivated staff. But that time has passed, says labor market expert Ton Wilthagen in the newspaper of the North. “Working from home is over the peak”.
The productivity and motivation of the home-based employee rose in the beginning, but this is only short-lived. In time, the employee feels free to do anything in between, shopping or other activities. Moreover, according to Wilthagen, the promotion opportunities are also not beneficial when working from home, because people literally get off the grid, especially when they are at home for more than a day in the week.
Shoulder-to-Shoulder Cooperation
“People work better in one place where ideas can be exchanged quickly and decisions can be made faster, and we can deal more flexibly with the continuous changes in our global markets”, said spokesman Martin Chris van Honeywell. The American multinational is following IBM and Yahoo, who recently scrapped working from home. “In fast-paced sectors where it is all about innovation, shoulder-to-shoulder cooperation works better”, says Michelle Peluso, the new chief marketing officer. Seeing and speaking with each other physically provides fast communication, maneuverability, creativity and true ‘learning experiences’.
And then, according to Wilthagen, there is another trend that drives working from home: the big, traditional organizations are shrinking, they are working with an expanding flexible shell, and that makes the need for a “fixed” group of people in the office even bigger.
Source: https://www.hrpraktijk.nl