Today, I’m defeated by the traffic. Heavy rain that pour since last night has caused massive traffic jam across the city and suburb or Jakarta. So, after moving only 2 km in 40 minutes, much slower than walking, I turned my car back to home. I dropped a mail to my boss and colleague that I’ll be working from home today.

Thanks to the today’s technology, working when you are not physically in the office has been possible these days. The argument that is given to employer is that, working from home will make employee more productive. Employee will have less commute-related stress in the morning. And also, the commute time saved can be used to do more work, or improve the quality time of an employee, which will also reduce stress. It also helps the company to save cost by providing shared workspace for several employee (hot desk) instead of one dedicated workspace for each employee.

However, the flexibility to work from home (or any other place except office) seems to be abused. At least that is what come into mind when Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo!, cancelled the company’s Work From Home policy almost three years ago. Marissa Mayer explained her reason in two words: Collaboration and Innovation. (Read the full article at Business Insider)

What have been my experience or Working from Home? Do I feel more productive? Do I feel more creative or innovative?

My experience so far has been mixed. For most of the time before my son started to crawl, I have been very productive working from home. I can work on few slides, draft a proposal, taking phone calls, sending emails, changing diaper, feeding my son, carry him out for a fresh air, all without missing my commitment to my office for the day. But once my son get more understanding on how the world works, he thinks that when Dad is home, Dad is free to play. It is hard to be productive when you have three year old son jumping on your lap every now and then when you are in the middle of conference call, or writing a proposal.

Then for most of the time, after 2 days working from home or outside office, my productivity will get worse. I will crave for human interaction, even just an informal full of sarcasm chit chat during lunch. Somehow, the advance of technology like Blackberry Messenger, Whatsapp, Video Conference, Mobile phone, and multitude of other virtual interaction technology still fail to replace face to face interaction with other human being. So, probably Marissa Mayer was right after all, that office interaction and collaboration is still needed.

I really think that, work from home has been abused by some employee. Some people think work from home mean there are no need to come to the office, even if coming to the office is the only way to get the job done. Sometime, getting a job done require collaboration with other. It requires drafting on a white board with a group of people in a meeting room, instead of virtual board on a Lync conference. Heck, believe it or not, I even found a huge disconnect among my team members who are sitting in a same meeting room every day!

However, different from Marissa Mayer, I think Working from Home need to be improved instead of abolished. Work from Home has a lot of benefit, as people sometime need to handle personal matter that can’t be handled outside working hour. However, cultural changes need to happen at the same time. Employee should aware that they are measured by getting the job done, and that means doing everything necessary, including coming to office when necessary, to get things delivered, with a quality.