Working At Home - 5 Advantages and 5 Disadvantages

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Background

Before Covid19 staying at home typically was not an option managers warmed to. It was commonly felt that with employees away there would be a falloff in productivity, a drop in business continuity (like how are we to hold meetings?) and how would in-office business processes be undertaken (like signing checks and giving management authorization). It was felt that we had to physically interact and if that did not happen the business would suffer. Ultimately, most execs were not interested or willing to consider proposals that would allow staff to work from home.

Covid19 with all its global stay at home orders has caused, moreso forced, a number of corporate leaders to revise and reconsider their positions against working from home. There’s nothing like a greater incentive than to prevent your business from totally collapsing.

Remote work has seen a massive upswing in popularity with 3 out of every 4 workers preferring the at home flexibility rather than be tethered to the office. A whopping 85 percent of businesses have said that productivity has shot up due to work flexibility which has also seen a 77 percent increase in worker morale.

Let me quickly add that knowledge workers due to the nature of their work can better operate under ‘work at home’ arrangements. This clearly is not possible for blue collar and other workers like construction workers, mechanics, front line workers, farmers etc. that have to physically interact with something or someone to carry out their work.

We should also recognize that the pros and cons will likely differ between knowledge workers who own their own business as compared with those persons that are employee by a company.

Now that we have a good sense of working from home and the types of workers lets dig deeper into trying to better understand the ads and disadvantages of this arrangement.

5 Advantages of Working from Home

1. Flexibility of Time

    One of the most often cited benefits of working at home is that as a business owner or consultant you can set your own working hours. You can wake up when you want and shut down anytime. So going to the gym or catching a movie in the middle of the workday is entirely possible. The ability to set your own schedule gives you the freedom to do what you want to when you want to do it. This can be extremely liberating causing many enjoying this to say ‘I never want to return to the 9 to 5 grind’.

    The dark side of flexibility occurs when some managers believe that you should always be available. How many of you have been awoken by your phone at 11pm and when you look it is your manager calling? Employees are mostly not willing to push back because of fear of not being called a team player or worse losing their job

    2. No need to Travel

      Don’t you feel a sense of daily dread to have to face traffic. Oh how you wish to avoid that drive into work and back at peak time when the car snarl is at its worse. This could run up to on average 3 to 4 hours a day. Not to mention finding suitable parking. What about when you have to stand in the rain for a bus or hope that a taxi has enough room for you when you want it. When you work from home you don’t have to worry about any of this. No having to squeeze up in a line to wait on transport or incessant ‘bad drives’ that cause daily accidents and cause you panic.#

      3. Saves you money

        If you really think about it, the daily costs of going to work can rack up. Depending on where you are typical expenses could include your gas, fare for bus/ taxi/ train, food that you buy from the shop around the corner and/or for some of us parking costs. That does not include the wear and tear to your car (if you have one), wardrobe (clothes and for women hair, makeup. By working from home apart from the video Zoom meetings and having to look fabulous above the waist you can avoid all these costs. And that can add up to a pretty penny or two.

        4. Avoiding Toxic Workplaces

          How many of you have experienced or know a staff member that has increasingly complained about higher levels of stress and anxiety at work. This has often been brought on by bad behaviours which have become all too commonplace. They include rumor mongering, staff belittling, unrealistic expectations, blame casting, nepotism. By working from home you are more able to insulate yourself from these environments which are more filled with people that are power hungry, seeking fame and personal gain.

          5 Happier Staff

          The cumulative benefits of working at home and having more autonomy, less stress, more time to attend to other things that are important, lead to happier more motivated staff. This 'Happy' effect promotes a positive work culture which is magnetic and attracts top talent

          5 Disadvantages of Working from Home

          1 No Work Life Balance

          Typically this feature of working from home is cited as an advantage. In this instance however I wanted to point out the downsides that affect work life balance. When you work from home the lines between work and home life often become blurred. It sometimes becomes increasingly difficult to shut work off which has a tendency to be both disruptive and undermine home relationships. This can lead to an increase in stress and even resentment as work tends to get prioritized ahead of everything else at home.

          2 Disruptions and Distractions

          If you are to work effectively at home you have to set up a space to do so and not be
          sidetracked by things like that yummy chocolate in your fridge, bed, radio and the kids who are playing PS5.

          Also, we spend about 2-3 hours per day on social media platforms. This time is often broken up into much smaller chunks but it can have a very disruptive effect if every time you are concentrating your phone notifications are going off.

          3 Aches and Pains

          It may seem obvious but your work environment has been set up for work. The furniture is ergonomic ensuring minimal strain on the employee. Further, there are workplace health and safety standards to ensure that the worker is not subjected to conditions that would injure them. When at home however we do not have those safety features. We will sit on the uncomfortable couch typing for hours. Or sit at the table where it is too high and the chair too low causing wrist pain. Or we sit on the bed propping ourselves up at odd angles with the laptop wondering afterwards why we have neck pain.

          4 Peer Pressure

          Although the understanding and appreciation for working at home is improving still many people would suggest to bloggers, affiliate marketers and consultants that their staying at home suggests that they really are not working, worse that they really are unemployed. This type of peer pressure can be very disparaging to at home workers, worse it has a tendency to calcify a culture against at home work arrangements.


          5 Monitoring Performance Challenges

          Traditional work environments have supervisors and managers monitoring how work is undertaken. This allows them to have a close up assessment on performance so that the required actions can be taken to improve productivity. There are fancy balance scorecards and performance dashboards all designed to keep track on this worker performance. It is much harder however to do this when workers are dispersed geographically working from home and when the monitoring systems, along with their metrics, are not configured to properly to measure home work.

          Conclusion

          Covid19 has given us an opportunity to look at work at home arrangements close up. There are clearly gaps which if closed would better support and protect the worker. What is sure is that these work at home arrangements are likely to become a common feature of our daily work





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          Recent Comments

          26

          Awesome post hugh. I have done both, working at home for myself and for a company. Both require a balance that is sometimes hard to find, but when you do, the advantages are so worth it.
          I must say that not every personality or mindset is suitable for work at home. Although, I believe everyone can aquire the skills and mindset to do so.

          Yes mindset does play a huge role. Without focus 'yuh buss' (can't cope) as we say

          While the advantages are great for working at home, the disadvantages from working at home need to be structured properly. Like if I had a business involving computer work, I wouldn't need to monitor my workers every move. I would set quotas that must be fulfilled on a daily basis, and if those quotas are not being fulfilled, then their paycheck would be smaller.
          I don't care if they go shopping, walk their dogs, taking care of their kids, or whatever, as long their daily quotas were made. But I guess some managers in their companies have this "control over employee behavior" which can be nagging, instead of making their employees be responsible for their work by making the math on their paycheck stands out. By the way, this could be a good niche for a website. Thanks for sharing friend. All the best!

          Totally agree with this suggested MBO approach (management by objectives). Its also very project driven with milestones set within an overarching corporate plan.

          Hugh

          I wrote a post just about like this for my website. I know that if I was allowed to work from home, I wouldn't have retired as early. Working from home definitely has it's advantages but there is something to be said for the interaction between colleagues at work. In our case, it doesn't matter. All our colleagues are online anyway. 🤣

          ~Debbi

          A very interesting read Hugh, thanks for taking the time to write this.

          In my opinion there are more pros than cons, my wife loves it too.

          8 months now she has been working from home, set up with laptop and two additional screens in the spare bedroom.

          Let's see how office world changes after this covid thing finally bites the dust!

          Yes it will be curious to see if we revert or concoct some form of hybrid home work arrangement that is broadly supported

          Here they are discussing 3 days in the office, 2 at home..

          How do you feel about that?

          Much better than 5 days in the office.

          But I'd prefer 2 days in the office and 3 at home!

          Or even better 5 days at home😉😉

          Excellent points, Hugh!

          Since this Pandemic started, I've followed my same morning ritual and routine, and restrict myself to my work desk at home while treating my fridge like it's an expensive cafeteria.

          At the end of the day, the work laptop gets tossed into the closet till the next day 👍

          Appreciate the post!
          Isaiah 😊

          That fridge boy I feel it sometimes has super magnet powers particularly when there is chocolate cake in it lol

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