WFH may have positive impact on employees, employers

SHAH ALAM -- The trend of working from home or going to the office three days a week can have impacts in terms of expenditure on utility costs, office space, and employee productivity if implemented in this country.

Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) faculty of economics and Muamalat associate professor Dr Nuradli Ridzwan Shah Mohd Dali said from a positive perspective, companies did not need to worry about providing office space or desks for their employees since they were working from home.

He said that employers could also save on utility costs borne by the company, including electricity bills, water, air conditioning, internet, gas and telephone bills.

"The only problem is how to monitor the productivity of these employees. Perhaps companies need ways to monitor this aspect.

"We can monitor employees based on their work output. From there, we can measure their performance when working from home," he told Sinar on Monday.

He said that developed countries like the United Kingdom and the United States had already adopted the work-from-home system.

According to him, employees benefit from saving time and travel expenses to go to the office.

"Some employees take a minimum of two hours to commute from home to the office, so a lot of time is spent on the road," he said.

Nuradli added that the productivity factor of employees needed to be considered by employers if they wanted to implement a system of going to the office three days a week.

"It means employees need to produce more output if they are allowed to work from home," he said.