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10:34 AM It's now the age of work from home

Well, there's good news. And then, there is better news. Offices are on their way to redundancy. And what's more, there are enough statistics to back it up. A global study done by Cisco has come up with an overwhelming aye for the growing insignificance of a physical workspace. The study focused on two surveys — one centring on employees, the other on IT professionals. Each survey included 100 respondents from each of the 13 countries - the United States, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, China, Japan, and Australia - resulting in a survey pool of 2,600 people. The surprising results said two of three workers believe that they do not need to be in the office anymore to be productive. And that the same percentage of workers said they would opt for jobs that were lower-paying but had leniency in accessing information outside of the office over higher salaried jobs that lacked flexibility. In India, nine of 10 employees said they did not need to be in the office to be productive. In China, they were a majority again with 81% and 76% in Brazil. While these figures say a lot about what workers are looking forward to, there are many who have already opted out of confining offices to work from home. They find many pluses to working from home. US-based consumer insight group Icono Culture's India Editor Sumaa Tekur made the choice after working several years in offices. She found the transition to have improved her quality of life tremendously. "I can break my day into parts more comfortable for me. This way I have much more control of my life," she says. "I am far more productive when I am in charge of my time. There is no time wasted commuting, being stuck in traffic, etc. I can take breaks when I want, too." According to her, the few likely disadvantages to a lack of an office environment are that interactions with colleagues are over telephone and online. "This can give a false sense of network, and make people islands sometimes. There are no coffee breaks with colleagues or office gossip and parties. You have to make an extra effort to feel connected to people you are working with," Tekur says. However, that is a price worth paying, feels Rumman Ahmed, who works with an international business newswire. For him, the perks of working from home far outweigh that of working from office because this way he gets more time with his family. "If I had to go to an office every day it would mean some 10 to 12 hours away from my family. If my daughter needs me any time, I am right there. And I don't have to wake up feeling I have to rush to work, and fight traffic to get there on time. I can pace myself," he says. It is a win-win scenario for both employees and the employers, he feels. "The company doesn't have to spend enormous amounts setting up office spaces." To work efficiently from home though requires some amount of discipline. "I log in early because the markets open at 9am and I should be there before that. And I can't be late on news, so there is work pressure," Ahmed says. Tekur adds: "There are clear deliverables, which have to be adhered to." But more thanthe discipline of the individual, it is the manager's ability to create an environment of trust that gives the employee a senseof ownership and responsibility towards work that matters, feels Tekur. The other issue that can be tiresome is technological hitches, says Ahmed. "In office, there are IT departments to take care of such issues, but when you are at home, it is your responsibility to fix technical problems." It's obviously not all peaches and cream, yet if statistics are anything to go by, where two of three employees worldwide (66%) said they would take a job with less pay and more flexibility in device usage, access to social media, and mobility than a higher-paying job without such flexibility, 'office' is soon to become history.

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