I’m at home today as I don’t feel well enough to travel to the office.  This also saves the others I work with from being polluted by by sneezing, coughing and other forms of germ propagation.

I quite like working from home, I can be really productive with no phone ringing, no office noise to contend with, just me focused on the job I want to complete.  Home working should be an option for anyone who doesn’t need to be in an office, but it shouldn’t be a full-time pursuit.  Here’s why.

How many times do you bump into people in corridors and find stuff out?  How often do you overhear conversations and get wind of things that are happening that affect you?  How often do you wander to other parts of the building to see colleagues and find out other cool stuff?  How many impromptu meetings do you attend?  I’d say most people reading would be able to say that at least of of these things has happened to them.

Your business needs that interaction, it’s an unofficial form of dissemination, stuff gets passed around the grape vine.  You know what else?  You need that interaction too.  No human being should be locked in a room all day with no opportunity for human contact, or for opportunity to interact with colleagues and bounce ideas off one another.  Collaboration tools can go so far to replace the human contact but never fully, humans need that interaction.

I work with a guy who told me that he had to threaten to leave to be allowed to work from home.  At the time he had a boss who didn’t really believe in it, but he gave way to the request and allowed the home working.  Guess what.  The guy who wanted to work at home now HATES working at home, and the homeworking culture generally.  Loneliness is a real issue.  In a company that pushes all employees to work from home there is even no real value in travelling into the office – everyone you need to see is at home.  It becomes a real effort to arrange times when you will all be in the same place.

In my extremely scientific finger-in-air opinion, I’d say that people need to be in the office at least one day per week, probably more like two.  And everyone should be in on the same days too.  That way, you get the benefits of no distraction home working, and the collaborative benefits of human interaction.  Or you take the Joel Spolsky approach and ban teleworking and give those that need them private offices to work in.  It’s actually not as costly as you think.