Working from home has become the latest trend and we are talking globally here. Every day, more and more companies are allowing their employees to work from home at least once or twice a week. And even more companies are looking to outsource, looking for employees who can work from home and, sometimes, from a different country. We can see these “work from home” job offers increasing every single day on the different job boards and people are really
starting to get into this new groove because, let’s face it, staying at home has to be better than going to the office every day. However, this is not true for everyone. Working from home has its pros and cons, but, in the end, it depends on each person.
Let’s begin listing some of the pros: no commuting, that alone should convince you to stay home, no traffic, no public transportation, no people on top of you during rush hour, just bliss while you walk from your room to the office space; flexibility of hours and in managing that time, most of these jobs do not necessarily have a rigid schedule you need to follow, so you are able to manage your own time, especially if you are a freelancer; less stress, since most people working from home are their own bosses, or their bosses are nowhere near them, stress can be reduced to a minimum; less distractions hence more productivity, no useless meetings, no coworkers telling you about their 13 cats or children, no running around the whole office looking for a photocopier that actually works, no wasting time with small talk, just you and your family; more family time, since you are already at home, there is a really good chance you can spend more time with your family, or your dogs, while working from home, you just need to be organized and know how to manage your time in a productive way.
Even though you are now probably ready to pack up your desk and go home, you need to know that working from home also has its disadvantages: isolation, even though some people prefer being alone, others would rather have some company during the day, but if you have a family, this is not really a problem; distractions, we might have more distractions in an office, but that does not mean there are not any at home, browsing social media becomes your biggest enemy while working from home; separating work from home, this is probably one of the worst disadvantages of working from home, you need to be able to organize your day in a way you get to spend enough time working and enough time with your family or friends, try to have a separate space for working, do not stay in your bedroom, find a good nook in the house to do so; working endlessly, since you have no one controlling your hours but yourself, you might feel the need to work at all times, that is why you need to be very organized with your time and prioritizing your responsibilities.
Now you are ready to consider your options and decide whether you are a good candidate to work from home or not. Welcome to the future!
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Vanessa Fardi / NEUVOO
Team Leader US/CA/LATAM
Email: vanessa@neuvoo.com
Comments
Yea, it can be heaven. But it is in many cases a hell. People sometimes don't work at all. They take too many freedom and just stop working. Then they are late with delivery and then we have a problem.
HI Vanessa,
Great post on an important and I think maybe overlooked topic. This has really got me fired up to get a nice community conversation going on this topic. I'm hoping others join us too. The question for me as HR and L&D professionals is 'How are we supporting our remote workers?'
As you say, there are many benefits to working from home. My work is largely home-based and many people say to me things like, 'Oh that must be nice'. They're right. It really is for all the reasons you've mentioned plus more. But, It has taken some effort over a few years with support from others for me to get this right. It's cruicially important to manage the balance of the pro's and con's of working at home. There is a skill in that as well as support that's needed from the organisation and the people you work with.
The point you make on 'isolation' is an important one. There's the social side of that and the chit chat that comes with being in an office as well as the professional input that you sometimes need on the fly too. Working in an office, it's so much easier to bounce an idea of the person you're sat opposite.
So the question I think for HR and L&D professionals is an important one. How are we supporting our remote workers? How do we ensure they are connected with the organisation? What do we do to socially include them? How are we supporting home workers to get that finely balanced approach working right for them and for us?
I'm interested in your thoughts and views. As a community, surely we can come up with some great tips and advice here?
Hi Ady. There are some great points here. A few years ago, the company I worked for decided that to save money they could introduce homeworking. This was exactly what it was, doing homework which can be interpreted in different ways. I found that it was more demanding and I was doing more hours than I normally would at work.
Interestingly, it actually took me a while to get a feel of all the symptoms of working at home and it must be said that I developed strategies where I mentioned to my Manager at the time that I would prefer to work three days from home whilst the other two days would be spent in the office rather than four days at home and one day at work. I also adopted an approach where as part of the time at home, I would actually change my environment and do my work at a Library and this helped immensely.
I guess it is up to the individual to introduce what works for them best but even so, meeting other homeworkers too was something we all suggested. This occurred as both I and my colleagues were remote being either at home or on the road so many times we would meet somewhere neutral if either of us happened to be in the same geographical area. We found this to be very supportive, less isolated and even more interactive because we could be out somewhere rather than being in the house all day.
Another strategy which was also introduced included working from some of our other offices. Now whilst this does not seem like homeworking, (It was called hot-desking) this approach considered costs, time and who could access the desks via a booking system but it was an extension of homeworking where environmental changes were considered and benefits of meeting other employees at different offices could be exercised. This proved useful to us because we put it under the umbrella of homeworking as the individual had the choice to say that they were off a particular day working from home but could be at another office if they wished. I know, the word “trust” comes to mind here but we made it work considerably via communication.
So, L & D could implement policies/practices of this nature because a key problem to homeworking we concentrated on was the psychological factors that existed. As someone who experienced this, I raised some points whilst working in L & D and researched differences in for example, behaviours within our respective departments and how we behaved at home whilst doing our work.
I brought in questionnaires and observed my work colleagues on how they organised their times at home compared to work with examples showing questions such as: What times of the day did they work best? Were they working at their optimum from home or work? Was work-life balance being exercised? Did working from home actually improve their skills in communication, motivation, interpersonal/team interaction? There is more to the process but some of the ideas here brought back interesting results and they helped us to introduce practices that were flexible and these proved useful in revising our policies but more importantly, changing our behaviours to match both ends of the spectrum of working from home and actually enjoying it but without sacrificing any skills that we probably thought we would start to lack had we been working in our office.
L & D will need to approach the mentioned strategies at each level within their respective organisations carefully in order to get "buy-in" because obviously a lot of factors are to be considered. However, carrying it out in the right way can benefit the organisation and workers according to meeting their preferences. Communication is key here with trust.
Ady, a good discussion here which actually makes you think realistically about working from home and how it is or can be managed from the individual and/or their organisation.
Mike