I have never had a problem with employees working from home. I could actually never understand why not. It seems that the world is at last adopting, especially with the Millennials now taking lead in the workforce.
Millennials
Millennials a.k.a. Gen Y is the name of the generation born between the early 80's and mid 90's with other words they are now around the age of 20-35. They will be our future leaders. According to a recent PWC Study millennials will be 50% of the global workforce by 2020.
Millennials matter because they are not only different from those that have gone before, they are also more numerous than any since the soon-to-retire Baby Boomer generation – millennials already form 25% of the workforce in the US and account for over half of the population in India. By 2020, millennials will form 50% of the global workforce.
Why not work from home?
I can unfortunately not find an article where I read about a guy who did some research on Millennials and their opinion working from home. If I remember correctly 90% + Millennials made a point of saying flexible working hours are important and also more than 90% of the same generation said that they would prefer from home. The interesting fact was than 0% said that they don’t want to exclusively work from home.
This was a very interesting point as for me that is a very mature statement. Sure it can mean many things, but in my opinion the Millennial generation understand a fundamental fact of the way the world should operate and if the millennial generation is our future leaders, I believe that we are in for a good stint on earth.
In my opinion, everybody in the world should work together to make things work. In order to make things work, we should work towards a common goal, and most importantly we need to make sure that each and every one of us must deliver our little part of the bigger equation.
During my career, I have worked full time at an office, full time and home and also at some stages I had a mixture of working from home and working from the office. I thoroughly enjoy working from home, as it gives you a lot of flexibility to be more involved with the family and kids. This bring me to a very important point.
Flexibility to work from home, does not only mean flexibility of where you work but also flexibility of when you work . Again the most important thing to remember is that you are part of a bigger equation and you should always ensure you deliver on your promises and your part.
Retaining your best talent.
In my opinion all organisations should consider flexible working hours. You will retain your best talent when you do. It does not matter what time somebody is at the office, or when they leave … the only thing that matters is if they are performing their required duties.
It has already started years ago, but I believe that the internet has made the world so small, that it will not matter where you live. You can stay in Africa, but still work in the US or Europe. All we need to find is a way to ensure that you employ the best person for the job, and not necessarily the closest person to your office.
I have worked in the IT industry for many years, and I thoroughly believe that good developers and IT staff should be measured on specific personality traits and not on where you were born. I have personal close friends / colleagues, which are developers in the UK, US, India, Australia and obviously from South Africa. Why do I enjoy working with them? I can summarise that in one sentence…
When they say they will deliver something, you do not have to check if they deliver, they just will. Independent of where they work and when they work.
This allows the rest of the organisation to focus on what they are supposed to focus and not have to check up every day of something was done which should've been done. I really enjoy working with the millennials.