Remote Control

"Anita Guha has been working from her home in Mumbai for the past 10 years. She facilitates leadership development programmes for IBM. She opted to work from home when she had her second daughter. She didn't want to miss out on her children's early years. Later she found herself taking on mostly global roles, where she could be more productive at home. She could also save time on commuting to work. IBM was fine with the arrangement....
Google offers employees in India flexible work timings and the authority to define their own schedule and type of work. SAP allows employees to work one day a week from home. Some have formal work-from-home policies, but with the condition that employees have to work it out with their manager.

Saritha Raghavan, HR solutions analyst at Juniper, had been advised by her doctor to take special care when she was expecting a baby. "Since my parents lived in Kerala and my spouse had an extremely busy work schedule, it was very difficult for me to cope alone. Juniper supported me at this juncture and permitted me to work from Kerala," she says.
Vishak Gopinath, part of the corporate communications team at Cisco India, says he frequently works from home. "I also often leave the office early to beat the evening traffic, and then work from home." Rony Thomas, corporate communications manager at HP India, says the facility has been a boon for him ever since he and wife Priya, who also works, had a baby 19 months ago. He says the focus in HP is on getting the work done. "A lot of people take calls late in the night or early morning, so we are flexible about the day timings. You have to work it out with the manager," he says."

IBM
Allows several category of employees to work from home. for many others, it's flexible, with managers taking the call, Work/life balance touches morale, productivity and retention. Current lifestyles have resulted in higher stress levels and IBM takes a positive view towards creating conducive environment to help people integrate work and life.
Dell
Has launched a 3-month Connected Workplace pilot project in Nov. 2011. Under this a select team connects to the Dell network only through remote connection.
Microsoft
Allows flexible scheduling, allows employees to work part-time or full-time from home, provided the manager permits.
Juniper
Allows flexible scheduling, allows employees to work part-time or full-time from home, provided the manager permits.
HCL Technologies
has initiated a work from home policy. the idea is to improve employee morale and motivation.
Accenture
Has a formal flexible working arrangement poilcy that enables employees to take up flex time and work from home. has employees who have been working from home ofr years.
Yahoo
Allows employees to work from home provided they are avaliable on calls, participate in meetings and are able to meet deadline. Encourages employees to work on outcome-based working model and hnece doesn't track number of work-hours put in the office.
Google
Offers employees flexible work timings and the authority to define their own schedules/type of work.
SAP
Allows employees to work from home one day a week. With permission of the manager this can be extended upto two days.
CISCO, WIPRO, Intel, HP, Netapp, Texas Instruments
Very flexible options, requires manager's permission
Infosys
wroking for 3.5 hours in a day is counted as being present on the day. The rest of the hours can be done at home with the permission of the manager.

(Source: Officially at home, Sujit John, The Times of India, Jan. 3, 2011)

Three Critical Faciltators
The three critical faciltators in letting people work from places other than office are -
The Manager
Manager is key in the entire scheme of things. If the manager is stuck-up the whole arrangement goes for a toss.
Employee
The maturity of the meployee and self-management ability is important. Outcome-based working models are helpful.
Technology
The third and the last critical link is the technology that acts as a enabler