Appropriate software/access to allow work from home
Adame, Caplliure and Miquel (2016) mentions that work from home is one of the important facilities which modern firms allow their employees. Moreover, governments of several countries like Australia encourage WFH by giving tax benefits. The study would visit several aspects related to WFH by taking AKC Architectural Firm as the base of the study.
The case study presents a situation that the staff absent themselves due to personal commitments which points out that the AKC Architectural Firm does not have work from home (WFH) in place. Adame, Caplliure and Miquel (2016) point out that the work from home or WFH facility would enable the employees to work from while attending to their family chores simultaneously. Ungureanu et al. (2018) points out in this respect that architectural firms require to have a minimum number of onsite employees at any given point of time. This is important to ensure smooth progression of their projects so as to ensure completion within time and avoidance of extension costs. Thus, it can be inferred that AKC Architectural Firm does not have work from home in place due to its very nature of work, which is management of architectural projects.
The management of AKC Architectural Firm needs to acquire the software and provide access to the staff to enable them work from home. Hayes, Douglas and Bonner (2015) point out that implementation of work from home facilities would attract immense initial investment from the firm. The departmental heads would have to first make a list of employees who do not have their own laptops and/or internet set ups at home. Then the company would have to carry out an accounting of its present inventory of laptops and modems. The aim of this stock taking would be to find out that gaps between the laptops and modems which would be required to provide work from home facility to each staff and the actual inventory which the firm has in place. Then AKC Architectural Firm should acquire the required number of laptops and modems which would be used by the employees to avail work from home facility. The firm in addition to the laptops and modems also acquire the software and operating system packages form those laptops. It should also acquire and have software packages which would allow the managers to supervise and allocate tasks to their subordinates availing WFH on a given day (Mendes et al. 2015).
Additional resources
The management of AKC Architectural Firm would be required to carry out a cost benefit analysis before allowing its WFH facilities. While carrying out the cost vs savings analysis, the firm is required to calculate the loss of productivity which is suffering due to staff absenteeism due to lack of WFH facilities. For convenience, it has been assumed that the firm employs 100 employee and each employee gives a productivity of $100 a day. Therefore, the total target productivity would be $10000 a day. The analysis would consider two situations, first in absence of WFH and second in presence of WFH. If it is assumed that in absence of WFH, 50 percent of employees can’t work, then the productivity is $5000. Now, in the second case, once WFH is implemented, at least 95 employees can work, if it is assumed that 5 employees are on leave. Thus, the firm on a given day can gain productivity of $9500.
As far the cost of acquiring laptops are concerned, it has been assumed, that the firm has 60 laptops and modems in place and requires to acquire 40 laptops and modems. It has been assumed that the firm acquires 40 units of XPS 15 9550 at $ 2649 per unit (ap.dell.com 2018). It has also been assumed in order to ensure internet access to these 40 employees, the firm buys 40 units of 100 GB data plan from Vodafone Australia at $ 80 per month. This means the cost of giving internet plans to 40 employees would come to $ 3200 (vodafone.com.au 2018). The cost benefit analysis shows that the even if 5 employees stay on leave, the firm would earn a profit of $5828 by allowing WFH facility. Thus, it can be inferred from the cost benefit analysis that the firm would earn a profit of $ 5828 by allowing WFH against $ 1328 without WFH. This means the firm would earn a profit of $ 4500 by allowing WFH facility.
AKC Architectural Firm should educate its employees on the tax benefits which they obtain by working from home. The Australian Tax Office allow certain tax benefits to employees who avail work from home facilities. The taxation law benefits can be divided into two categories namely, employees having working areas and employees without working areas. The employees of both categories can avail rebates on facilities like gas, electricity and work related phone use. However, certain rebates like depreciation of office fittings like curtains, insurance and interest on mortgage can be enjoyed by employees with work areas only (Harris and Krueger 2015). This shows that the firm can encourage more employees to take WFH instead of taking leaves. This would its productivity and profits.
Cost savings for the firm due to WFH
Figure 1. Tax benefits of WFH in Australia
(Source: ato.gov.au 2018)
It can be pointed out that it is not feasible for AKC architectural Firm to allow WFH to its employees for entire 38 hours of weekly working hours. However, it can be pointed out that as per the cost benefit analysis the firm can allow 50 percent of its employees avail WFH on a day. The firm can alternatively allow employees to avail 50 percent of their total weekly shift hours from home.
The firm should take stringent steps to ensure that its employees do not misuse the facility of WFH. The management can take a few steps to ensure prevention or at least minimize the exploitation of WFH facilities. First, the employees would be required to login at their normal shift hours and they must send their login reports on their official emails. The second measure which the firm can take is installation of employee monitoring software on the laptops. The third step which the managers can take to prevent misuse of WFH facilities by certain employees is that employees should be available on emails to take tasks.
The implementation of the WFH facilities would present certain issues before AKC architectural Firm. The first issue which implementation of WFH would present is that the managers would find it difficult to manage both onsite and WFH staffs. The second issue that the situation would present is that the firm would find it difficult to manage and measure productivity of employees. The third issue which the situation would present is that the managers would find it difficult to measure the reasons responsible for poor performances of certain employees. management, WFH may encourage certain employees to share confidential company data with unauthorized identities (Adame, Caplliure and Miquel 2016).
The firm should ensure at least 50 percent of its staff members are onsite on any given day of work. This would ensure smooth progression of projects on time and timely competition.
The firm can make two different arrangements in order to ensure the staffs can take care of their children and work at the same time. The first option would be opening of a crèche where the staffs can leave their children in charge of carers. The second option would appointment of a different manager board who would supervise staffs availing WFH.
Conclusion:
AKC Architectural Firm should implement WFH to enhance its productivity. The firm should however, monitor its employee closely while they work from their respective homes.
References:
Adame, C., Caplliure, E.M. and Miquel, M.J., 2016. Work–life balance and firms: A matter of women?. Journal of Business Research, 69(4), pp.1379-1383.
Adame, C., Caplliure, E.M. and Miquel, M.J., 2016. Work–life balance and firms: A matter of women?. Journal of Business Research, 69(4), pp.1379-1383.
Ato.gov.au. 2018. Working from home. [online] Available at: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Property/Your-home/Working-from-home/ [Accessed 4 Sep. 2018].
Harris, S.D. and Krueger, A.B., 2015. A Proposal for Modernizing Labor Laws for Twenty-First-Century Work: The «Independent Worker». Washington: Brookings.
Hayes, B., Douglas, C. and Bonner, A., 2015. Work environment, job satisfaction, stress and burnout among haemodialysis nurses. Journal of nursing management, 23(5), pp.588-598.
Mendes, T.D., Godina, R., Rodrigues, E.M., Matias, J.C. and Catalão, J.P., 2015. Smart home communication technologies and applications: Wireless protocol assessment for home area network resources. Energies, 8(7), pp.7279-7311.
Ungureanu, P., Cochis, C., Rodighiero, S., Bertolotti, F., Mattarelli, E., Montanari, F., Rinaldini, M. and Scapolan, A.C., 2018. Innovating onsite or coordinating online? An exploration of how knowledge practices shape the onsite and online collaboration interplay across the lifecycle of collaborative communities. CERN IdeaSquare Journal of Experimental Innovation, 2, pp.22-29.
vodafone.com.au. 2018. Mobile Phone Plans.. [online] Available at: https://www.vodafone.com.au/plans [Accessed 4 Sep. 2018].
Www1.ap.dell.com. 2018. Dell Outlet Refurbished XPS Laptops – Amazing prices | Dell Australia. [online] Available at: https://www1.ap.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/products/quickship/au/en/xps_notebook?c=au&l=en&s=dfo [Accessed 4 Sep. 2018].
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