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A Boon or a Bane?
The Missing Piece of Employee Cost Dharma Raju Bathini & George Kandathil. This paper examines the discourseon work from home inglobal and indian contexts, itshows a long-held excessive fo cus on employee benefits whichdeflected the attention away fromemployee costs.
Even thoughthere was discussion on costs inth recent past, it mainly focussedon employers ' costs. However, agrowing body o f recent researchshows that the framing o f workfrom home as an employee benefitcreates normative pressureson employess to intensify theirwork, the authors argue thatcurrent discourse, which portrayswork from home as an employercost and simultaneouslyan employee benefit, cansteepen the normative pressureson employess, creating undesirableoutcomes.Dharma Raju Batliini (E-Mail: [email protected]) is Assistant Professor, Indian Instituteof Management Calcutta.
George Kandathil ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor,Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.A couple of months back,chief ofIndia's largest bank, the State Bank ofIndia, stated that her company is exploringthe feasibility of allowing its femaleemployees to work from home ("SBIStudies if Women Can Work fromHome," 15 December 2014). The statedmotive behind this step is to retain femaleemployees since work from homeis considered as beneficial to employees,particularly, female employees. Suchstatements are part of a broader widespreadingnarrative that depicts workfrom home as a boon to employees.However, there is increasing evidencethat work from home involves significantemployee costs, depending on how it isframed and implemented.
Hence, we arguethat instead of excessively focusingon employee benefits, corporations andpolicy makers should consider employeecost also.Indian NarrativeWorking from home is not a recentphenomenon in Indian corporate sector.News reports claim that in InternationalBusiness Machines (IBM) India andHewlett-Packard (HP) India work fromhome is an integral part of the employ-568 The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 4. April 2015Work from Home: A Boon or a Bane?ees' work life. These companies portraywork from home as a help that they extendto their employees in balancing workand life (Sabharwal, et al, 2011). Manyother Information Technology (IT) companiesmake similar claims. For example,firms such as Avtar-I Win specifically aimto promote home-based working andother flexible work practices to helpwomen join and sustain in the workplace(Avtar I-Win, n.d.).
In this discourse,work from home is highlighted as a bigopportunity for women to join and continuein work while balancing work andlife (Ahuja, 2003; Mitter, 2000). Thisemphasis should be understood in thecontext of the high exit rate of Indianfemale employees due to marriage orchild-care reasons. For example, 45%ofIndian women considered the strong socialnorm that women must take care ofthe family as the main reason for womenleaving the workplace (McKinsey, 2013).Hence, to the extent that the femaleworkforce provides firms with labor supply,employers also benefit.A few state governments also repeatthe narrative of employee benefits. Forexam ple, the ICT policy of AndhraPradesh 2010-2015 promotes work fromhome as an employee benefit. Thus, thepolicy lists several benefits of work fromhome such as:
(1) gainful employment forwomen with young children and for physicallyhandicapped people,
(2) mitigatiionof risks to employees' personal securityin night shifts and
(3) work-life balance.Overall, as the recent research suggests,the Indian narrative seems to focusexcessively on employee benefits(Bathani & Kandathil, 2015).
Given thatthis discussion on work from home is inthe context of IT industries that is dominatedby multinational companies, thislocal focus seems to be a reflection ofthe global discourse.Global NarrativeMany multinational companies acrossthe globe have repeatedly highlightedwork from home as an employee benefitthat they provide. Further, companieseven portray work from home as a privilegegiven to employees (Mescher, et al,2010), even at a cost to the employer. Inthis direction, Yahoos' recent ban on workfrom home is telling as it resulted in adebate in the media (Swisher, 2013b) and subsequent corporate actions.
While responding to Yahoo's action,the proponents of work from home werevociferous about its employee benefits(Swisher 2013b). However, indicatingwork from home as a costly business,Marissa Mayer, Yahoo's Chief ExecutiveOfficer (CEO), defended the ban.She argued that people are more collaborativeand innovative when working togetherin the office (Carlson 2013).Whilerefuting M arissa's justification as insufficientto outweigh the employee benefitsthat work from home practice provides,some sources made the following accusation.When Marissa went through thelog records of Yahoo's employees, shenoticed that many employees, who wereworking from home, had not logged longenough into company's network (Carlson,2013). Hence, she unjustifiably concludedthat the employees were abusing the priviTheIndian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 2015 569Dharma Raju Bathini & George Kandathillege (Swisher, 2013c).
Nevertheless, a fewother companies followed the Yahoo path.For example, Best Buy, which introducedwork from home using a concept, "Resultonly work environment (ROWE)", reducedthe opportunities to work from homefor some of its employees. Similarly, HP,which is famous for its flexible workingpractices, shrank its work from home options.Like Yahoo, these companies alsocited the potential damage to collaborationand innovation as the reasons for thisreduction (Hesseldahl, 2013; Lee, 2013).
The actions of these companies and theirofficial justifications for banning or limitingwork from home highlight employercost in allowing work from home. Despitethe focus on cost, there has been no discussionon employee cost. This is partlybecause the emphasis on employer costis premised upon the repeated argumentthat work from home is an employee benefit.Hence, predictably, the banning andlimiting of work from home invited strongopposition from proponents of work fromhome. For example, Yahoo employeesconsidered the ban unfair to the employeeswho were working from home. Alongwith others, they argued that work fromhome was beneficial to employees, particularlymarried employees having children,in their struggle to balance workand family (Guynn, 2013). Thus, manypeople found Yahoo's ban ironic sinceMarissa got a nursery built adjacent toher office for her newborn baby whilebanning work from home (Swisher,2013a). Interestingly, in response, citingemployee benefits such as work-life balance,most IT companies supported workfrom home, despite Yahoo's ban (Swisher2013a).
This support and the justificationare not surprising given that the dominantacademic discourse also portraysflexible work practices such as work fromhome as largely beneficial to employees,ignoring employee cost (Fleetwood,2007).Stunning AbsenceThis excessive focus of work fromhome discourse on work-life balance andother employee benefits has deflectedboth academic's and policy makers' attentionaw ay from em ployee cost(Kelliher & Anderson, 2010; Mescher, etal, 2010). Thus, as discussed earlier, eventhe discourse that generated a debate onboth costs and benefits focuses exclusivelyon employer costs leaving out employeecost.
However, recent researchreveals significant employee costs suchas increased work stress and loss ofwellbeing ( Felstead & Jewson, 2000;Putnam, el al, 2014). Other costs includesocial and professional isolation, consequentnegative performance appraisaland its adversary im pact on careergrowth (Leslie, et al, 2012). Researchalso indicates that these costs emanatemostly from the way work from homepolicy is implemented. Often, work fromhome end up being a means to either intensifywork (K elliher & Anderson,Recent research reveals significantemployee costs such as increasedwork stress and loss ofwellbeing.570 The Indian Journal o f Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 2015Work from Home: A Boon or a Bane?2010)-increase work hours and includeodd times in work hours-or dilute employeeopposition to the already intensifiedwork (Bathini & Kandathil, 2015).
Hence, it is important to discuss employeecost associated with the practiceof work from home, particularly in relationto work intensification.Bringing in Employee CostRecent academic studies point outthat work from home policy, by the wayit is implemented, can lead to work inten sificatio n and related stress(Broadfoot, 2001; Kelliher & Anderson,2010; Putnam, et al, 2014),damagingemployee health and social relations(Leslie, et al, 2012). For example, theemployees who were working from homewere found obligated and pressured towork during odd hours and longer thanthey usually worked from the office. Theobligation and the pressures come froma widely held societal norm to reciprocatefor being allowed to enjoy the benefitof work from home.
Thus, work intensificationis created by the dominantdiscourse of work from home as employeebenefits. These dynamics-thenormative pressure leading to work intensification-seem occurring in Indiancontext as well (Bathini & Kandathil,2015). Moreover, when employees opposedintensification of work that theycarried out in office space, firms coulduse work from home as an employeebenefit in exchange of acceptance of theintensified work (ibid).In this context, if the "employee benefit"discourse is combined with the narrativethat portrays work from home asan employer cost while excluding employeecosts, it can steepen employees'normative pressure to work intensely.The current discourse of work fromhome, thus, is likely to help companies,at the cost of employees, in legitimizingodd and long work hours that go beyondeven legally specified limit. Hence, theIndian IT employee association's statementthat in the absence of regulatorymonitring companies could use work fromhome to make employees, particularlywomen, to work longer (Nandakumar,2013) deserves serious and immediateattention.Some of the reader commentson e-news articles on work from homein India repeats this point (" 16 IT cosoffering work-from-home option," 2012).
This possibility of forcing work hours thatbreaches even the legal limit is high inthe Indian IT context since studies havedocumented that many employees workbeyond 60 hours per week (Nadeem2009) that exceeds the legal limit on maximumwork hours. Studies have reportedsuch occurrences elsew here also(Fleetwood, 2007).Companies could use work fromhome to make employees, particularlywomen, to work longer.Hence, overall, as states and corporationsconsider pushing work from homeas flexible work arrangement that benefitsemployees, it is important to discussthe costs, particularly work intensificationas well. Without minimizing thesecosts, the discourse that portrays workfrom home as an employee benefit canThe Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 50, No. 4, April 2015 571Dharrna Raju Bathini & George Kandathilfunction as a tool to legitimize work intensificationthat breaches legal limit.Therefore, it is also important that thediscourse on work from home be situatedin the legal framework on maximumwork hours.An Employee RightWhat is the way forward?
Of course,we are not arguing for throwing the babyout with the bath water which is to abandonpolicies such as work from home.Rather, we need safeguards to protectthe interests of the employees while workfrom home is implemented. The first, andperhaps the most important, step in thisdirection is to consider employee cost,particularly work intensification.Law confers upon certain employeesin UK the right to request aflexible work arrangement.Second step could be to frame legislationthat grants employees the right torequest work from home. In 2003, theUnited Kingdom Government introducedsuch a measure through the ‘flexibleworking act'(The United Kingdom FlexibleWorking Act - Legal Memo, 2006).This law confers upon certain employeesin UK the right to request a flexible workarrangement, and confers upon the employersa duty to consider the request. Itrequires a well-defined and documentedprocess for negotiation between the employerand the employee by laying downa procedure for considering and resolvingemployee requests.
However, this lawdoes not guarantee employees the rightCritics contend that current legislationdoes not make the right substantivesince employers can rejectemployee requests.to flexible working arrangements. It onlyseeks to foster dialogue on flexible workarrangements between employers andemployees. Further, a few reports suggestthat this legislation, while is a step in theright direction, has not met with expectedsuccess in improving workplace flexibility(ibid). Critics contend that current legislationdoes not make the right substantivesince employers can reject employeerequests, citing business reasons. Further,other studies suggest that despite the legislation,the implicit messages aroundworkplace flexibility discourses still conveyit more as an employee privilege thana right (Mescher, et al, 2010).Therefore, while legislation could bea step forward, more important is to expandthe discourse on work from homeas an employee benefit to include employeecosts, particularly work intensificationand the related potential violationof legal limit on maximum work hours.
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