What corporate can gain?
- Office space: think of office prices in cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Banglore etc….. What is the cost of office building for 1000 seating? I was looking for 1000 sqft decent office in Andheri(E), it was astonishingly high at 80l-1 cr. I am sure 1000 sqft office can break mid-size companies budget.
- Electricity: saving of electricity. Employers can vouch you the cost of electricity due light and air conditioning.
- Parking lot: we are not there yet when every employee would prefer to drive to office. Most of the employers provide parking space that comes with handsome price. For example decent size parking in NYC may need USD 500 per month and in similar situation it may cost Rs 10,000 per month in Mumbai.
- Subsidized food: many companies with large number of employees do provide these facilities. With food prices rising around the world, the canteen bill will definitely going to affect drastically.
- Monitoring cost of employees – be it surveillance camera or attending machines
- Additional cost of HR – for dispute resolutions
What corporate can loose........
- Face to face interaction for understanding the work.
- The employees who are not motivated needs constant surveillance which would be difficult to monitor if he/she works from home
- Affect on performance
What Employee can gain?
- The extra time with family members; the time you spend away from home and the time of travel.
- The cost nanny: its really breaks one’s budget if its single parent or single earning and needing the nanny services. I pay about USD 1600 for nanny services. Although, I have spent additional money for surveillance camera and required infrastructure for the cam, I haven’t got feeling for comfort for a single day.
- Cost of Gas: yes, its tremendous. I am paying on and average USD 1000 for my gas. It makes huge difference in my monthly budget if I can avoid traveling to client site or work from home.
- Cost Toll: In India, toll is just beginning, it will get to the point, where the commuters fill feel the pinch.
- Cost of formal dresses: it is unbelievably high one keeps a track of total money spend on formal dressing to the office. (pls remember tech-mahindra’s dress coding article.) you can not go to office in flip-flops or denim.
What employees can loose???
- Not sure if the spouse (especially stay in moms) would appreciate your constant interfering her work.
- May be kids do not want to be monitored so closely.
- Personal growth – by working closely an employee knowingly or unknowing learns about work/knowledge/behavior. Its kind of industry updates/happenings. Some of the solutions to these problems could be –
Initially, I thought that work from home for partial day. (It would disadvantage to the employees as they have to spend same amount of money and time for travel, clothes, nanny …..)
Working from home for part of the week i.e. 2-3 days a week. This would allow one team to occupy the space on certain days. The corporate can accommodate two teams for the cost of one. In this situation, the whole team can manage their meetings, presentations, and performance review…etc as per their schedule. Its still 50% cost saving for both corporate and employees. Thus creating a "Win-win situation".
