What’s the downside of having employees work from home? For starters, they can’t brainstorm in person, respond to urgent issues as a team or build trust as a staff.

At least, those can be the effects.

Flexible work arrangements work best for highly responsible employees who can handle working alone. If a department’s processes require a hight level of teamwork, separating people might make them more productive on their own, but less so as a group.

It also presents some challenges to CFOs: They need to ensure employees communicate effectively with management, staff, vendors and customers (if necessary) while offsite, all without micromanaging. After all, if someone needs to spend a large chunk of their time making sure everyone offsite is still on the ball, it’s be more cost-efficient - and less of a headache - to keep them in the office.

The other potentially dangerous issue when implementing flexible work arrangements: When it’s not going to work for everyone, at least a few people are going to feel left out (a.k.a., angry).

But there are ways around it - if employees need to be in a the office for work, consider switching them to a schedule of four 10-hour days per week.

Or letting Finance staffers work from home one or two days per week (if only a few tasks require them to be in-office) will give them the same morale and productivity boost they want while maintaining the healthy level of teamwork the company needs.

Has your Finance department allowed employees to telecommute? Sound off in the comments section and let others know what has and hasn’t worked for your company.

Tags: cost-efficient, flex-time benefits, telecommuting