working from home

Commentary: Are you better off working from home than in the office?

With open-plan offices, dual-income households and the need for deep thinking, might you be more productive working from home?

REMOTE WORKING CAN LEAD TO IMPROVED WORK AND FAMILY LIFE
OPEN-PLAN OFFICES KILL COLLABORATION AND PRODUCTIVITY BUT ARE STILL COMMON

Over the years, offices around the world have seen the shift from private cubicles to open-plan layouts, to encourage collaboration and socialisation among employees.

However, employees often find open-plan offices distracting, and because they are not able to concentrate on their work, they tend to communicate and collaborate less frequently with their colleagues

Moreover, there is often little privacy in open-plan offices. The shared desks and spaces usually mean overhearing phone calls or catching your colleagues engaging in online shopping.

Further, studies have shown that employees in open-plan offices take nearly two-thirds more sick leave and report higher levels of unhappiness and stress, and lower levels of productivity.

Yet companies continue to build open-plan offices because they require less space and are thus more cost-effective. To save more on office space, some companies even introduce hot-desking, where employees either share a desk with others or are not assigned a permanent desk and must find one when needed.

The hidden hell of hot-desking is much worse than you think