| I think the crux of the question is "to what extent is it reasonable for an employer to expect that an employee will change his life to increase his value to the company". There are numerous examples of this. I'm sure plenty of people here have gone drinking on a school night and been useless at work next day due to the resulting hangover. If this happens occasionally you may just get light ridicule, however do it too much and you're probably going to get into trouble. Perhaps you enjoy playing contact sports of some description. Well you might injure your hand and that is going to hurt to your typing speed. At what point is it reasonable for your employer to request you reduce or cease these activities? These things are probably going to be dictated by supply and demand ultimately, a popular device in fiction is a "maverick" character who breaks every rule but people still keep around because he has some particular skill that is of high demand and short supply. It's also dictated by how much an employer can force an externality to an employee. For example if it were legal for a company to mandate adderal use and there was evidence to suggest it improved productivity then you would expect rational companies to mandate it unless the very best programmers uniformly refused to use it. Though adderal may be illegal for this purposes that may not stop it becoming defacto mandated. For example if everyone at work is using and it is known but denied in a nudge wink sort of way. If you are a non using bottom performer who is worried about your upcoming review then there is going to be very strong pressure to use. In other words the company has externalised the legal risk. The way it applies to working from home is that there is historically and currently an expectation that you "go to work" and therefor working from home is a bonus. If it was the other way around and there was an expectation of home working, would that change the equation? |