For many years working from the office was so obvious that no one even tried to undermine it. Hundreds of thousands workers were coming everyday to their workplace, where they have been spending about one-third of their lives (on average). If we add to this about an hour per day of commuting time, people all over the world waste more than 250 hours per year in traffics on the roads, waiting for a public transport and so on.
It doesn’t seem reasonably, does it? This time could be devoted to their hobbies, families, friends or just self-development. People realized that working from home may let them to spend more time with their loved-ones and pursue their passions. That’s probably one of the reasons why remote work has become so popular during the last decade.
Of course we can’t forget about the main reason which made remote working some kind of standard, instead of an exception to the rule — a global pandemic of COVID-19 in 2020. The governments have faced one of the biggest challenges in XXI century, but also companies have had a real heavy nut to crack — how to maintain financial liquidity without exposure to their employees’ health? That is when remote work came to their aid and have helped many companies to survive on the market in these difficult times.
Working from home has many benefits. As mentioned above, less commuting time is an indisputable advantage of remote work. What normally takes at least half an hour, during remote working may take less than a minute to move from your bed to the (home) office. Remote work is usually done from home, but you can also work from any place in a world, which may be a huge benefit for those who love to travel, but they can’t take a vacation as often as they want to.
Even if you don’t travel a lot, remote work may be good for you. Sometimes working in the same space everyday is boring and can destroy your creativity. Remote work let you do your job from different places — your favourite café, restaurant with panoramic view of the city or even beach in Miami. You are more flexible and you can decide when and where you work.
Remote work helps companies to hire the best employees from all over the world. There are almost no geographical limitations, so a company with headquarters in USA may hire a specialists from Australia, China, Poland, Norway and RSA and all of them can work together, using some intranet solutions, Internet or other communication tools. Companies can reap the benefits of the cooperation between multicultural team of professionals instead of looking for employees in their origin country by force.
Some people say that these who work from home are more productive than employees working at the office. They explain it by less office interruptions — when you sit in the office next to your workmate, it is possible that sooner or later you will start talking and lose the thread. Of course at home you also can get distracted, but proponents of this theory say that it is much more unlikely than in the office.
What’s more, remote work is beneficial in reducing commuting costs and helps to lower the carbon footprint of employees. Nowadays there is a growing trend to take responsibility for our actions and more and more people try to reduce the negative impact to the environment. Remote work may be helpful if you care about the Earth.
If working from home is so efficient, why don’t we eliminate commute time, save office space, reduce costs and let all employees work remotely? Why do we lost our money on traditional office work, when we have so many possibilities to work in a modern way, laying on a beach with a cocktail?
Well, just like everything, remote work has some disadvantages, which can affect the whole organization. Working from home or even on different sides of the globe could create difficulty in scheduling meetings and coordinating projects because of everyday home duties that you can do when you work remotely or different time zones, if you decide to work from an exotic island. It may cause some communication problems — if you were in the office, you could simply ask someone about a problematic issue. If you work remotely, you can send an email or another text message and just hope that your interlocutor hasn’t taken the dog out at this very moment.
A really big problem with remote work is a possibility of feeling loneliness and isolation. Going to the workplace gives us an opportunity to meet other people, talk with them and have a laugh during the coffee break. Seemingly it can be annoying on a daily basis, but when you lose it, you will understand that you miss that so much. People need another people. Even if you are an introvert with very little need of social interaction, sometimes it is nice to talk to a real person.
Remote work is also connected with increased need for meetings. When you are physically at work, manager always can walk across the office and check what you are doing. When you are at home, that is no longer possible. Instead, managers need to schedule a lot of virtual meetings to discuss routine project management tasks. Too many meetings can be overwhelming and cause employees’ frustration, what can have negative impact on their efficiency.
You should be aware of the fact that working from home isn’t free of distractions, especially when you don’t live alone. Let’s be honest — your partner, children and pets may be slightly more distracting than the coworkers in the office. It is much harder to stay focused when your kids want you to read them a fairytale or your wife is ringing the dinner bell than if your workmate tells you another story you don’t care about. That’s why many people are much more productive when they work from the office.
Main issue that remote workers have to deal with is to maintain work-life balance. Working in the office forces you to concentrate on your tasks since 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Then you get out of the office and you can spend your free time doing whatever you like — doing sports, reading books, playing video games, running with your dog or spending quality time with your kids. When you work on home office, you don’t have such a border between your free time and the office. You can always take a break and go for a walk with a dog or make some lunch and eat it in front of your computer. Many people who work remotely has a problem with unplugging after work, because they are still in the same space and they are dangerously close to their workstation. What is a problem with responding to that one email that you’ve got on 9:00 PM? The notification on email’s app reminds you that you ignored it. A lot of remote workers finally give in and write back, even after working hours. That’s the beginning of the end of their work-life balance, which can cause burn-out and even depression.
As you can see, working from home isn’t for everyone. There are people who will love that form of work, but also many employees will get frustrated and feel burned out. Whatever you choose, take care of your work-life balance and separate time for work and your private time. That’s the simplest way to stay focused and efficient in what you are doing.
Written by: Karolina Matusiak
