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We (team members from different teams) have been given the opportunity to propose ideas to improve our workplace. Our MD, is aware that we are going to propose Work From Home (WFH), and he is awaiting our proposal. That does not guarantee it will pass, as if he does not feel convinced, he will just veto it. Let me first, give you a little bit of background:

We are big corporation, with 25K employees. WFH is managed differently in different countries. In our office (120 employees, managed by our MD), there is no such thing called WFH, but there is flexible working hours. There are many levels of higher management than our MD. Therefore, he does not have the full freedom. But he has the authority to implement something like this.

Now, going back to our proposal: We wanted to propose that staff can choose one day a week to work from home. This day is fixed, so the management overhead is reduced (e.g.: X chooses to work from home evey Tuesday). Our argument will be that WFH definitly will attract some talents, and retain some as well if it is implemented. In addition, we will try to showcase some successful companies followed this approach. However, we are aware, there will be strong resistance from mid management team (direct managers of our teams - around 15 people).

Therefore, we think we still need stronger argument to convince our MD, and make it acceptable for the middle management. My questions, what can we add to our proposal? What should we avoid? How to present WFH as a good idea?

For what its workth, we are an IT department, in construction industry

UPDATE

Company Hierarchy
The MD is the like general manager of the entire division (one location). He is the direct manager of our teams managers. Therefore, there are : us (teams members -> team managers -> Managing director). There is no one above the MD in the country. However, there are 2 levels of management above him before reaching the CEO.

Why I think this question should be reopened:
The linked question is about individual initiative requesting to work from home. This is in no way close to my question. I (and other team members were given the green light to propose an office policy already). This question does not ask how to bring it up. It is already brought up, and presentation meeting is scheduled. Our question is how to have solid proposal given the facts above.

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  • @JoeStrazzere From feedbak of the team members, some of the managers restricted the flexible working hours. I think it is because of trust issue, or fear of reducing productivity if the team member is not in the office
    – TAM
    Sep 16, 2017 at 11:18
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  • If the majority of your direct management team is opposed I see no way of accomplishing this at all. HR would work to get one manager to approve it or fall in line with a global policy promoting WFH (I think we've had such a question before?) but there's little to be done if multiple people in management are convinced it won't work. Can you clarify your actual management structure? Even when written out MD still tells me nothing about the number of levels we're talking about here.
    – Lilienthal
    Sep 16, 2017 at 13:48
  • @JoeStrazzere I've added some information. One of the HR team members is in the presenting group.
    – TAM
    Sep 17, 2017 at 3:00
  • @Dukeling please see my update
    – TAM
    Sep 17, 2017 at 11:00

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