"Work From Home" for IT/ITES: Yin and Yang

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) coming up with an option of "work from home" for the IT/ITES industry was probably some long due good news, keeping in mind that the tax holiday will end post 2011. The industry pioneers see this as a good sign as they say that this will significantly reduce transportation and infrastructural cost. It is also expected that this will give the IT/ITES industry an opportunity to tap into new talent pool which could also include homemakers.

But there is a serious threat in this approach....

Firstly, working from home will raise serious questions on the security concerns of clients' confidential data. Secondly, the accountability factor will be affected if someone works from home and is not being supervised. This will adversely affect the overall productivity of the work and also the quality. Lastly, it will be very difficult to make this work in reality. Each "out of home" employee would result as an additional center of operation. Technical difficulties faced will be very difficult to resolve for the IT department of an organisation for so many "out of home" locations. At the most 1 IT team can be dedicated to an area of 2 to 5 kilometres. This will in fact increase cost.

If we take into account the cost of setting up a PPVPN, the overall proposed savings of $1000 per employee per annum will account to lot of additional expenses and operational difficulties for an IT/ITES company.