The Truth About Working From Home

I’ve been working from home for almost a year now, and like anything it’s got some pros and some cons. In this article I’m going to outline both the good stuff and the not so good stuff, which will hopefully give you a bit of an idea what to expect if you’re thinking of working from home in the future or if you’re an employer wondering what your employees are doing when they are working from home. 

The first thing I would recommend that you do before deciding whether to start working from home is to have a look at the company culture. 

Does your boss micromanage you? If the answer is yes, the chances are working from home will not work for you as the likelihood is your boss will not be able to deal with the loss of immediate control as working from home gives you greater autonomy. If your boss trust you and give you a great deal of autonomy anyway then you’ve got a better chance from the get-go.

Then you need to look at your own personal needs. Some people think that working from home is brilliant because you get to manage your own schedule, which in most cases is true but in reality, it can also be quite a lonely place, especially if you’re in a company that also has staff working in the office 5 days a week, you can feel left behind and ‘out of the loop’. 

So, are you actually more productive when you work from home?

IT DEPENDS.

It depends on you, your attitude and how you manage yourself and your time. 

Often people say they want to work from home for a better work-life balance but let’s be clear work-life balance still includes the word ‘work’ which some people forget when working from home. Often it isn’t necessarily the person working from home that forgets to do the ‘work’ but maybe their partner. It’s easy for people to take advantage of you when you do work from home, as they see you was available and can give you things to do for them such, as running errands or doing household chores for example. 

The key to successfully working from home is starting as you mean to go on, through setting boundaries. Clearly define when you’re at work and when you’re at home. Don’t be afraid to say to other people in your household “no sorry I’m working”, because you are working, you’re at work. It just so happens that your office is at home. 

Where you set yourself up to work normally defines how well you are going to work from home. For example, if you set yourself up on the sofa, although you may say it’s a temporary arrangement that will quickly become permanent. If you sit down at lunchtime and start watching ‘five minutes’ of TV, an hour will pass in the blink of an eye. 

I work a 9 to 5, how does working from home give me a better work life balance then? 

First and foremost, it removes the commute which in itself gives you a better work-life balance. For example, if your commute was one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening, you’ve straight away got two more hours a day to do the stuff that you want to do! 

Also, let’s be clear, a lot of us are not productive when we’re in the office. So, when you work from home you can do a couple of things that you want to do without feeling guilty such as taking the dog for a short walk. 

I think the biggest work-life balance win when working from home is being able to structure your time as you need it to be structured. If it works better for you to finish at 3pm everyday but start at 7am as opposed to 9am, you can do so more easily when working from home and most employers (I've found) actively encourage this, providing you remember the one golden rule... Communication. 

Communication is where a lot of people go wrong when working from home. They assume that they are out of sight and out of mind, which may well be the case temporarily, but someone will latch on if you're constantly sacking it off early or only working at times when you're inaccessible to your colleagues or customers. 

If you want to start doing quirky things with your working hours it's easier just to have the conversation upfront with your line manager, let them know when you want to work, why you want to work at those times and reassure them that this will enhance your productivity (any change that you initiate in terms of your working hours should theoretically increase your productivity). As you can imagine these conversations are a lot easier when you have a good relationship with your line manager and when you're smashing your set targets/KPI's.

So, are you a fan of working from home?

YES! For me it works brilliantly, it's changed my life. I no longer spend 2 hours of my day commuting to the office, where I'd run around like a headless chicken for 8 hours whilst trying to avoid the barrage of distractions that exist in any office environment... I think the biggest misconception amongst senior managers is that they believe that staff are more productive when in the office, that simply isn't true, here's a quick list of some of the daily time-consuming distractions that exist in most offices: 

- Meeting's which overrun and overrun badly

- The barrage of phone calls (both internal and external)

- Loud talkers (for true concentration I need near silence)

- Unexpected visitors (who then get annoyed when you can't see them)

- Being on tea making duty. Making 10+ cups of tea isn't a speedy process

- Completely irrelevant office gossip. This is productivity zapping

- Having to deal with heating/air-con warriors

- The keyboard basher, why do people type so loudly?

- Colleagues constantly wanted you to check and edit their work

- Smells - Why does something always have a fish dinner and eat it in the middle of the office?

These may seem like small (some would say insignificant) things, but they all mount up and all zap your productivity in the office. When working from home there's only one person that can cause problems for you and that's you!