Work from home: Worshipping the office chair

Office attendance is not merely a management practice; it is almost a cultural festival. The boss enters; chairs adjust; laptops look busier; tea arrives with urgency; and the corridor becomes a silent parade of loyalty. In many organisations, productivity is still measured by how long shoes remain under the desk, not what the brain delivers. Therefore, when someone says they can work from home (WFH), many bosses hear: “Sir, from tomorrow, I will be productive without your supervision, your glass cabin, and your unexpected calls for a meeting that could have been an email.”

The global evidence is now more inconvenient than office tea. Australia’s Victoria has moved to give eligible workers the right to WFH two days a week. A large randomised study of hybrid work found two days at home did not reduce performance, promotion, innovation, or output, while resignations fell. In plain Bangla: people did not become lazy because their laptop sat beside a sofa.

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This does not mean every job can be done from home. Nurses cannot treat patients by email, factory supervisors cannot inspect machines through emojis, and salespeople cannot build every relationship on Zoom. But for accountants, programmers, analysts, designers, researchers, planners, writers, customer support teams, and administrative roles, forcing office attendance means navigating Dhaka traffic.

The real objection is not always productivity. Some managers genuinely worry about collaboration, mentoring, and confidentiality -- valid concerns. But recent research adds a more uncomfortable explanation: narcissistic leaders resist remote work because it reduces their power and status. The office gives them visibility, hierarchy, sudden summons, respectful nods, and daily importance. On video calls, everyone appears in the same box; even the managing director becomes one more rectangle with unstable bandwidth. These findings come from recent research by Shandell, Elliott, and Grant (2026), “Worship me at the office altar: Why narcissistic leaders resist remote work.”

We understand this psychology well. Many offices are designed not as performance systems but as small kingdoms. Presence becomes loyalty. Silence becomes discipline. Long hours become commitment. A junior officer who leaves at 6pm is “not serious”; a senior manager who keeps people waiting until 9pm is “dedicated.” In such a culture, working from home is not a policy question but a threat to theatre.

But employees must also be honest. WFH fails when it becomes unofficial leave, with cameras off, deadlines floating, calls ignored, data unsecured, and the home desk a bed. It also fails when managers do not know how to define output. Without goals, WFH becomes confusion; with bad bosses, office work becomes equally confusing, only with better air conditioning.

The solution is disciplined flexibility: classify jobs by task, not ego; define outputs such as reports completed, code delivered, and accounts closed; set common office days for mentoring; provide tools, cybersecurity rules, and meeting discipline; and train managers to manage performance, not chairs.

A Bangladesh version should start modestly: one or two WFH days for eligible roles, reviewed quarterly, with clear expectations, attendance rules, data protection, and quick escalation when performance slips. It can help women with young children, reduce commuting hours, retain talent, and cut costs. It should not be a blanket right or a boss’s favour, but a transparent agreement making flexibility a tool, not a slogan.

Future work should not be decided by lazy employees or managerial insecurity, but built on trust and accountability. The office remains important, but should not become an altar. Work is what people produce, not where their shoes are parked.

The writer is the founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd and BuildNation Ltd