Suky dives into the pros and cons of working from home, and how it can be a problem for some people but completely fine for others.
Transcription
Hi I’m Suky from Professional Selection. I’d like to talk about working from home. There’s some pros and cons to both sides but the biggest pro
for working from home for most of us is the fact that we don’t have to battle with traffic. Doesn’t matter where we live on average most of us commute
probably about an hour there and back every day if not more. But working from home is not really for everybody. I for one cannot do it five days a week.
I simply don’t enjoy not being in an office. I love the buzz of the office and I find it makes me successful.
Can I work from home where I need to? Absolutely. So if you’re thinking of working from home ask yourself some questions. What are you really like?
Do you really enjoy working in that office and talking to your teammates and what have you? Why else do you want to work from home what is the real
reason that you’re thinking of working from home? It could be that you have your child at daycare and you simply again, as I said earlier can’t do the commute. Well that’s fine, what you need to ensure that whilst you are working from home you are really disciplined and you have a process that you are following.
Now some of the cons of working from home besides the self management part of it is: is it possibly a career limiting move?
Think about it: if you’re working in an office your line manager and so forth, they’re constantly hearing you, they’re seeing what you’re doing, they’re
seeing results on the board etc. If you’re working from home and you are not as engaged with the office as other people might be, they may
not necessarily think of you when it comes to promotion, when it comes to a special project. I’m not saying they’re forgetting about you I’m just saying
that you’re not first to mind potentially.S o that is something you need to consider. There are ways of getting around that absolutely, but again
that’s something you need to be mindful of.
As we all agree, there’s many privileges of working from home. Now one of them might be that you need to take the afternoon off, your child needs to go to
the doctors or you’ve got the roofers coming in to change the roof. Quite frankly if you just went nobody would be none the wiser. Your boss wouldn’t know
that you’ve actually not been working that afternoon, but remember this is all based on trust.
So what do you do in that situation? Quite frankly I suggest you book the afternoon off. Most managers will probably say: “don’t worry about booking the
afternoon off thanks for the heads up, you’re going to be gone a couple of hours not a problem” But: it’s a trust thing, so I would definitely suggest that if
you’re going to do something personal whilst you’re working from home give your manager the heads up. That honesty will go a long long way.
So at the end of the day there are many pros and cons to working from home, and I’m sure there’s many that I’ve missed on both sides of the fence. As always, would love to hear your opinions and feel free to leave comments below, else I look forward to speaking to you soon.
