Working from home: Is it really more productive?

“Nearly a decade ago, I stopped going to the office every day,” said Farhad Manjoo in Slate.com. My bosses didn’t care as long as I got my work done, and I quickly found that “without office distractions” and pointless interruptions I was far more productive. I also became a better husband and dad. That’s why I’m convinced that “Marissa Mayer has made a terrible mistake.” The CEO of Yahoo recently decreed, as part of her plan to revive the struggling Web company, that employees will no longer be able to work from home. This week Hubert Joly, CEO of struggling Best Buy, followed suit, echoing Mayer’s reasoning that only when employees are physically together in the office can they properly brainstorm and collaborate for the good of the company. That’s true to an extent, but hard research has actually shown that those of us who work from home are not only more productive than our office-bound colleagues, but are also happier overall.

“As a working mother,” said Karen Finerman in FastCompany.com, I think Mayer and Joly’s decision makes “perfect sense.” It sounds wonderful in theory to combine the joys of stay-at-home motherhood or fatherhood with a fulfilling career, but what you end up with in practice is “the worst of both worlds.” Juggling child care and work means you can’t focus properly on your job, and while you “tease” your children with your physical presence all day, “your complete lack of mental presence” often leaves them confused and upset. Employers and colleagues, meanwhile, assume you’re less committed because you’re juggling work and kids, and your career suffers. One study found that telecommuters are 50 percent less likely to be promoted. People think working at home will help them achieve a “work-life balance,” said Katie Roiphe in Slate.com. But there’s nothing “balanced” about trying to calm a tantrumming toddler while listening to a conference call and simultaneously writing an email to your boss. In this hyperconnected, workaholic world, what we really need is “more separation between work and life,” not less. That’s why most people are better off with a physical office outside the home.

It depends on what kind of work you do, said Derek Thompson in TheAtlantic.com. In the information age, many jobs require intense concentration over extended and irregular hours. It’s more efficient to do that at home, at whatever hour works best for you. Some bosses worry that telecommuters will take naps or do some child care, said Cali Ressler in NYTimes.com.But if they’re also producing excellent work, on time, who cares? Many offices are filled with bored people who go through the motions of working, and spend all day “waiting for the bell so they can make a mass exodus.”

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People may technically be more productive at home, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post, but as a longtime telecommuter, I can tell you that productivity is overrated. Creativity and ideas are what really count, and “the spark of innovation” occurs more frequently when talented, competitive people are in face-to-face contact. Actually, said software entrepreneur Prerna Gupta in NYTimes.com, most digital-age jobs require both creative collaboration and “unstructured time to think.”That’s why I suspect we’ll eventually settle on a hybrid solution: requiring workers to put in a certain number of hours at the office each week, but generally leaving it to them “to manage their own schedules and complete their work on their own time, from wherever they choose.”