Why companies are still afraid of employees working from home?
Trust, Productivity, and the Case for Working From Home
I got my first taste of working from home (WFH) in 2014, long before COVID-19 became a mainstream phenomenon. The company I worked for was open to experimenting with remote work after I moved from the city to a remote region more than an hour’s drive away. The arrangement was simple: I only needed to come in once a week.
It made perfect sense. We were a technology company in the knowledge economy and virtual organisations. We developed, sold, and advocated for online management solutions that promised businesses they could “manage everything from the phone in their hands.” We were at the cutting edge of organisational innovation. This was our business.
Yet, two and a half years later, the experiment failed.
I was told to return to the office full-time. My ankle had worsened, making the daily “bus-train-walk” commute impossible. Parking costs $38 a day, and the 110-minute drive back and forth in peak traffic drained me.
I eventually resigned.
Looking back, the failure wasn’t due to remote work itself. Although I still appreciate the opportunity, it ultimately failed due to a fundamental lack of trust. Despite being a company that championed digital transformation, our work culture was stuck in the 1980s. The factory mindset ruled the day: employees had to “show up,” and hours, rather than results, defined how work was measured.
When paid for a 44-hour workweek, hours become the default measure of work done. Showing up became the objective of each day. But how do you prove you’ve “put in the hours” when working from home? Skype calls and phone check-ins became the digital equivalent of a manager keeping an eye on you. Despite over-delivering, the underlying sentiment is always, “I wonder if he’s working right now?”
It was as difficult for the company as it was for me.
The Proven Productivity of WFH
The numbers speak for themselves. A Stanford study found that WFH increased productivity by 13%, with fewer distractions, fewer breaks, and more focused hours. Another survey found that 77% of remote workers achieved more productivity while working from home, and research from Harvard Business School confirmed that those with flexible “work from anywhere” policies outperformed their office-bound counterparts. Even hybrid models, where people split time between home and office, have proven effective.
Forcing people back into the office actively harms productivity. Long commutes drain energy. Open-plan offices breed interruptions. Hours vanished into unnecessary meetings and office politics. It may look like work, but it isn’t.
On the other hand, WFH allows people to operate at their peak energy levels. It eliminates wasted commutes, reduces office distractions, and improves work-life balance. It also removes the artificial constraints of a 9-to-5 schedule, potentially increasing efficiency.
So why would anyone, knowing the benefits, want to ban WFH? It’s not really about productivity. It’s about control, outdated thinking, and, at its worst, sheer pettiness.
A “Trust” Problem
So, if WFH is great for employers and employees, why do so many business leaders still struggle to trust their teams to handle an email campaign or a quarterly report without breathing down their necks? A lot of it comes down to control. Many leaders still equate presence with productivity. If they can’t see you working, they assume you aren’t. It’s an outdated mindset that no longer aligns with the knowledge economy.
You can tell when a company isn’t entirely on board with WFH. They insist employees be “always available online” during work hours, even when it doesn’t make sense. If your little green Skype dot turns amber, expect a message: “Where are you? Why are you offline?” Some companies are even toying with the idea of remote webcam monitoring, literally watching employees and their screens to ensure they’re at their desks and working.
Trust is the foundation of high-performing organisations. When employees feel trusted, they take ownership of their work. They become more engaged and accountable. They strive for excellence because they care about the outcome, not because the boss is watching.
The Factory Mindset in a Knowledge Economy
Over a century ago, work was organised for factories and assembly lines. Workers punched clocks, supervisors monitored hours (and toilet breaks), and productivity was measured in physical output. You can’t be knocking out widgets if you aren’t at your station.
But knowledge work doesn’t operate like that. Creativity, problem-solving, and strategic thinking don’t happen on 9-to-5. A programmer doesn’t code faster because they work in an open-plan office. A copywriter doesn’t create “CLIO-worthy” campaigns under the constant supervision of the Managing Creative Director/CEO.
Real work in today’s economy isn’t about where or how long you sit. It’s about what you produce.
Measuring What Matters
If you don’t measure the right things, you can’t improve. Many businesses still default to tracking time instead of results, assuming that work equals the number of hours clocked. But showing up isn’t the same as getting things done.
Companies struggle with trusting remote work because they fear losing control. If you believe productivity is about how many hours an employee sits at a desk, then WFH feels like a loss of oversight. But if you measure results, it doesn’t matter where someone works as long as they deliver.
The best-performing organisations focus on outcomes, not effort. Instead of worrying about whether someone is online at 8 in the morning, they ask:
Did they close the deal?
Did they improve customer retention?
Did they launch a successful campaign?
One framework that helps companies shift this mindset is OKRs (Objectives and Key Results). Google, Intel, and numerous startups have utilised OKRs to maintain alignment and accountability. The idea is simple:
Objective: Set a clear goal. Something meaningful that drives progress.
Key Results: How will you know when you have achieved your goals? What has to happen when you have achieved your goals? Define measurable outcomes that indicate success.
For example, instead of micromanaging WFH employees with time-tracking software, a company could set an objective, such as: “Increase revenue by 20% over the next two quarters.” The Key Results could include “Expand the sales team by 30,” “Increase deal closing rates by 40%,” and “Generate 500 new leads by the next quarter.”
(I have written about this in How to Run Your Organisation Like Google if you are interested in learning more.)
When companies measure what truly matters, they regain control not by obsessing over time spent but by driving meaningful results. The real problem is outdated management thinking. Organisations that embrace this shift aren’t just more productive; they’re better positioned for the future.
And then, some are just mean.
“I won’t tolerate a position where taxpayers are working harder than ever to pay the bills and housing, and public servants in Canberra refusing to go to work.”
Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton. Australian Liberal Party
Working from home is NOT “refusing to go to work”.
In my professional life, I have met many who are just mean. They are not bad, in the usual sense of the word. They do not like the idea that colleagues can work from home (even if they can). They expound endlessly about the benefits of socialising in the workplace and teamwork productivity while mainly keeping to themselves. Except for the occasional upward glance when someone leaves their workstation to get a coffee, they hardly ever move. It’s a weird sense of not being able to see someone having an easier life.
These are usually the first to arrive or the last to leave. They are “hard” workers and make sure everyone knows it. They typically put in more effort than is required, but do not achieve very much. They look at colleagues with distaste when they arrive minutes late or leave on the dot. They claim it’s impossible to be productive at home because “you’ll just be lazy and do other things”.
The Nature of WFH
WFH is more than a policy or lifestyle. It recognises how the world has changed. It acknowledges that people deserve autonomy over their time and that their worth is not measured by the hours they spend at a desk, but the value they create for their organisation.
To ban WFH arrangements is to ignore the reality of the present. It is to pretend that productivity can be supervised into existence rather than emerge when people are trusted, empowered, and given a clear purpose.
If an employee delivers exceptional results while working from their home office, between school drop-offs, or in a cafe in Da Nang, does it matter? If an organisation can meet its goals because people are free to work when and where they perform best, isn’t that the objective measure of success?
So, before we rush to reinstate old ways of working, we must ask: Do we seek results, or do we just fear losing control? The future of work (and your organisation) depends on our answers.