90% Indian employees want work from home option, but 75% employers not comfortable with the idea

Although a staggering 90 percent of employees in India say they want a work from home option, 75 percent employers are not comfortable with the idea, a recent study has said.

The study was carried out by job portal, TimesJobs.

According to the study, “Nearly 60 percent organisations do not have a formal work-from-home policy. Incidentally, 75 percent employers are not even comfortable with the idea, whereas 90 percent employees are keen on having such a policy at work.”

The study was conducted with a sample size of over 1,100 employees and nearly 800 employers.

“To survive in today’s competitive business world, companies need to transform from a command and control culture to an empower and enhance value system. Organisations that are able to create a culture that nurtures agile, high-performance teams will thrive,” TimesJobs business head Ram Athreya Krishnamurthi said.

“Policies such as work-from-home and flexi-working create a culture of trust and communicate the company’s belief in its high-performance employees, which in turn attracts and retains top talent,” he said.

The study stated that 70 percent employers believe that productivity gets hampered when employees work from home, while 44 percent felt it helps boost productivity.

As many as 80 percent organisations said no to work-from-home as they felt they have no tracking mechanisms to manage those who opt for it.

It also found that about 40 percent employers see a lack of control as the biggest challenge for this.

Resistance from top management in acceptance and implementation of work-from-home strategy is another big challenge cited by 30 percent of employer respondents.

However, they do believe that work-from-home set up has certain benefits with 40 percent seeing its biggest impact in boosting their employer brand.

In addition, 30 percent see it as useful in curbing attrition while another 30 percent find it beneficial in improving employee productivity, the report cited.

At least 25 percent employers believed that there are many jobs that are not conducive to work-from-home arrangements.

A share of 42 percent say work-from-home does not work well in IT related work, 40 percent said it is not practical for logistics, supply chain management and procurement roles, while another 40 percent found it is not useful in customer service functions.

Nearly 35 percent employers felt work-from-home policy is unsuitable for those working in hospitality and related domains, another 35 percent said the idea is not apt for administrative profiles, 30 percent said for engineering profile, while another 25 percent saw work-from-home concept as inappropriate for accounting and finance roles, it added.

Amid these reservations about work-from-home, the study found that 35 percent organisations are unsure of adopting any such policy in the near future.

40 percent employers said they already have a policy but they will modify it to suit the changing needs of employees.

It also revealed that 25 percent organisations plan to implement this policy in near future.

With PTI inputs