Working from home might be bad for you

The very technology that enables telecommuting and working from home could be destroying its value.

Working from home can also make your work seem meaningless (Samuel Bradley)

More people than ever work from home, thanks to technology that means it is now easy to stay connected to work without being in the office.

Of the 30.2 million people in work in January to March 2014, 4.2 million were home workers, giving a home worker rate of 13.9 per cent of those in work. Home workers get the benefit of skipping the daily commute and make their own schedule from the sofa.

But working from home can also make your work seem meaningless, according to Lucy Kellaway. In an FT column, Kellaway said that we need to go to the office to convince ourselves that our work has some purpose.

She argues that the very technology that enables telecommuting and working from home could be destroying its value.

Her works echo those of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who told employees that workers should get back to the office to be “innovative” and “collaborative”.

“The truth is bigger than that. We need to go to the office for five more reasons: to convince ourselves that what we do has some purpose, to make us feel human, to help us learn, to give us a feeling of work as distinct from home – and to facilitate the flow of gossip," Kellaway said.

The reasons behind the work-from-home craze might not be the ones that we think, she argues. According to a study published in the current Academy of Management Discoveries, the most powerful reason people work from home is not that it makes family life easier or saves on a commute, it is because others are doing so.

If Google workers are encouraged to spend up to 20 per cent of their time on projects other than their own work, but to keep working from home to a bare minimum.

“Teleworking is fine for some of the people some of the time. But for most of the people most of the time it is the most backward progressive policy that has ever been invented,” Kellaway said.