Mention “work from home” to anyone and their faces will immediately beam with envy. Is it really that privileged? Here are my views after my company offered a trial.
1. Assumed loafing unless proven innocent. When you are at office, you are assumed to be working at all times. But when you are at home, you are assumed not to be working, so you need to put in additional effort to show that you are. For instance, send more emails, make phone calls.
2. Disturbances. When you are at office, you might get disturbed by colleagues, human traffic and noises, especially if you are one that gets easily distracted – I am. But when you are at home, you might still get disturbed by your family members, unless no one is at home.
3. Communication. When you are at office, you can have face-to-face meetings. But when you are at home, you rely on teleconference, which is very tiring and requires greater concentration to listen. However, I find that I tend to get better responses via email when people work from home, because that is the only interface by the home-worker to the office, unlike working in office, when the worker might be doing other work away from the computer.
4. Working hours. When working from home, the working hours become blurred. You are capable of working as long as you are communicable – within reasonable hours, that is.
What then would be the best arrangement? I would say… WORK FROM ANYWHERE! With that, I would have a choice to either work from home, or office, or cafe, or library, etc. Depending on the nature of work that I would need to accomplish for the period, I would choose where to work, as long as I get my job done.
1 comment
Interesting..