Home alone or office drone? How to get the balance right

Flexibility is fine, but it’s not a case of one-size-fits-all

Glenn Dutcher – Assistant Professor of Economics, Ohio University

Any flexible working strategy is going to have trade-offs. The key thing to consider is the current environment and the tasks a company is asking its employees to perform. Aligning a flexible working strategy against the different categories of tasks will allow companies to build a more effective working arrangement. Here are the key points to consider:

Is home working appropriate for the nature of the task in hand?

Is the task mundane or creative? And is it being performed alone or in a team? Previous research that looked at the effect of the environment on individual performance suggests people perform mundane tasks better within a cubicled office environment. On the other hand, remote workers are around 25 % more productive when it comes to creative tasks.

This makes intuitive sense. If a task is mundane, you need some structure, whereas it…