Mayer’s justification, “WFH is an option mostly preferred by women who need to juggle between home and work. But it shouldn’t be a norm and should be allowed in special circumstances,” sought to establish that a collaborative culture bred through face-to-face interactions with coworkers results in more productivity.

However, in India, firms are increasingly offering WFH or loosely put ‘work-from-anyplace-other-than-office’ option to enable employees achieve greater work-life balance.

The opening of Indian markets led to a proliferation of new age employment avenues related to privacy control and data security, tutorials, content supply, telemarketing, insurance, research, accounts, art, fashion, graphic design, ecommerce, transcription, consulting, and communication, apart from a plethora of BPO and IT services that depend on a set of deliverables and need a cursory supervision.

Such avenues facilitated the trend of telecommuting and what was initiated by global major, IBM about ten years back was enthusiastically picked up by one and all including American Express, GE, Wipro, Infosys, TCS and Dell, etc.

“It’s not always all about office and the firm. Telecommuting contributes to saving the environment from carbon emissions by cutting down fossil fuels burnt for commuting and running office infrastructure,” points out environment expert, Parikshit Srivastava.

The trend has been ensured a good longevity with the rapid spread of telecommunication services like the Internet, wireless broadband services, laptops and smartphones in nooks and crannies of the land.

And the telecommuting arrangement worked wonders especially for the female employee segment that was otherwise relegated to sectors like education or hotel industry.

They could now join work activities that were previously out of their bounds due to a combination of hurdles: lack of office infrastructure, poor transport, humongous traffic snarls along with the burden of handling house work and raising small children with little or no help from husbands reared in patriarchal social systems.

The option of an increasing employee freedom has only encouraged the likes of Monica Varshney to not give up on their dreams of an IT career as she took the marital plunge last month with an army officer whose work entails transfers every few years and will now need to shift from Gurgaon to Meerut.

Content supplier, Yatin Gupta however delineates that WFH can only be successful when the professional strictly adheres to the critical, vital ingredients of discipline, obtains proper training, and has a home-office environment geared towards building concentration and adopts clear work-time and home-time divisions.

An apparel designer, Pankaj Tripathi who has his office cum factory in New Delhi’s fashion hub, Shahpur Jat, emphasizes that that flexibility of working and communicating with clients and customers from any part of India or abroad has been a boon to both genders and in his case it allows him to also manage his personal commitments along with his participation in national and international shows.

Employees, cutting across most sectors, show their thumbs up for a setup at home that would allow them to punch in some WFH hours during holidays or weekends.

Only unofficial estimates are available on the percentage of telecommuting professionals among the entire workforce in the country and they peg it to a mere 5%.

Even this small section appears to be largely a floating population, as going to office is generally accepted as the first choice among employees, says Sana Kaur, a Gurgaon-based human resource consultant.

Saundarya Rajesh, founder of Avtar Career Creators, concedes, “Flexibility is oxygen for career women but then one only chooses it out of compulsion.”

Therefore, Gupta advises that telecommuting should not be considered all fun and an occasional office visit must be interspersed in the WFH routine to enhance communication with other employees, win credit and serious appraisal from bosses, access office equipment, and gain temporary shift in focus by being relieved from responsibility of home/children/pets-care that inevitably clutter up a person’s mind while managing from home.

Industry experts conclude that for more inclusiveness, especially when individual focus may be a key determinant to execute a piece of work, it is not a bad idea to allow the worker to toil away from an office but then the application of this concept should be considered on a case-by-case basis.