Work From Home Proposal

(Speech:-5-7 min.This is a proposal made to the board of XYZ company.The audience were asked to taake the role of the board members.Project 3 of Persuasive Speaking from the Advanced Communication Manuals)

Distinguished directors and members of the board: a warm good evening to one and all.

This proposal seeks to reduce the operational costs of the company by work from home option to employees by providing laptops.

With the beginning of the economic recession, this company had taken stringent measures to cut down the operational costs. These measures were successful as the reduced operational cost added much to the company’s profit. But, with the sky still clouded with recession, it’s better to reduce the operational costs to the best possible extent. The time mandates so, even at the expense of considerable initial investment as the world economic crisis shows a lingering tendency. Even otherwise, without the crisis too, it’s a good idea to reduce the operational costs and increase the profit. The already implemented cost saving measures were mostly at the expense of employee satisfaction-like charging the employees for daily commutation. Cutting down further in the employee satisfaction can have drastic effects. Also, drastic can be the long run effects of maintaining the same level of operational costs as it exists now. This proposal, however seeks to cut down the operational costs along with boosting the employee morale.

For the work from home option, as mentioned we need to supply laptops to the employees. Among the 4000 employees of the company, 1000 employees already possess laptop. The rest of the 3000 employees need to be supplied with laptops replacing their desktops. At the current market rate, without considering any form of reduction it will cost the company 9 crore rupees for these 3000 laptops. At this point we need not even consider the possible revenue from the sale of 3000 desktops. It may also be noted that the existing desktops itself may require natural replacement in the due course. This should cause much reduction on the investment amount of 9 crore. Approving this 9 crore budget by this board is the first step in moving towards the work from home option .Then the existing strong management should be easily able to manage the work from home. If the proposal is approved now, then the laptops can be procured and the cost saving work from home can be implemented from the first quarter of 2010.

In the details, the proposal advocates to exercise work from home option for employees on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Effectively, this means employees would come to office only on Mondays and Thursdays. Status updates, meeting and rest of the activities should fall in these days. Clearing spacing of work from home days and work from office days will make easy management. With the monitoring and status updates it is unlikely that the productivity of the employee reduces. On the other hand, with improved work life balance, it can be expected that the performance shoots up. Another attribute that would aid high performance would be the reduced number of meeting which means less interruption in continuous flow of work. Thinking on the time that can be saved from the Bangalore traffic spanning from 2-5 hours a day should make any manager and employee happy. The energy they save would be an extra benefit.

Now let’s see the operational expense per day that can be saved on each work from home day. On the lowest expectations it would be 2 lakhs for the free lunch for 4000 employees with per person lunch rate set at Rs 40. Another 1 lakh for the evening snacks and dinner combined can be saved on the same lines. With a whole of lights, computers, lifts and ACs put to rest, on the electricity front another 12 lakhs can be saved per day. The extra charge required for the individual laptop network connection can be made up the reduced internet usages in the company. That makes a total of 15 lakhs saving per day. In addition the daily commutation expenses would fall into the employee’s pocket. Needless to say, it would make them happy. In a year on average we can expect 144 work from home days- 3 days per week and 4 weeks per month. In the way indicated, the company would save around 21 crore rupees in all year. That means, the end of first year itself can bring the company 12 crores net saving. In the subsequent years the net saving would 21 crores. Also it can be expected that the employee satisfaction too get accumulated over these years.

With all these aspects of operational cost saving and employee satisfaction, I call upon the board to approve this proposal.