Work from home a.k.a remote working is becoming more popular as a new industry standard in this 21st century. The Internet and communication technologies are booming and we should really harness every single bit of advantages from it.
Still, many employers are afraid of this implementation due to many concerns. Now let us take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of working from home in both employee’s and employer’s perspective.
1. Better Productivity
There are a lot of people who just works better in their own home. Reasons are they feel more comfortable in their own home and has less distractions. They also feel less stress in their home as compare to a traditional office. Employers might afraid setting the traditional 9 to 5 working period may not work well for these remote workers as they might just slack off from the work without getting notice.
However, as productivity in home increases, employees spend less time to complete a task as compare to working in office. If they take 2 hours to finish one task in office, it should only takes 1 hour to complete it in a focused, comfortable and less distraction home.
2. Free from Office Politics and Gossips
One of the most devastating thing to destroy a company’s culture and internal structure is office politics and gossips. Colleagues who sit and work together tend to talk to each other during working hour, and this encourages gossips and politics to emerge. As an employer, do you want your workers to spend half of their working hours talking about how bad was your last decision, how terrible you comb your hair today and what should they eat for lunch break later? It’s a big NO as every minutes spent in this junk talks is a loss in productivity.
However, if employees are allowed to work from home, this nearly eliminates the possibility of politics and gossips. There will be less communications between colleagues and without face to face interaction, there won’t be much topics to discuss.
Employees who are weaker and socially awkward also find themselves better by working from home as they will not get the distraction and discrimination from colleagues which will make them lose confidence in their job.
3. Trust
Employers who let their employees work from home demonstrate high confidence in their workers. You are telling your workers that you trust them to get the job done wherever they are, with or without your direct supervision. Most workers do not like being constantly monitored or supervised during work, as this will hinder them from performing their best.
If you do not believe in your worker who will work from home dedicatedly, don’t even hire them. “Don’t hire the people you do not trust, trust the people who you hired.”
4. Environmental Friendly
If everyone is working from their home, it means no cars on the road and less pollution to the environment. This also can help to keep a good mood of your employees as they do not need to suffer in a traffic jam any more. Travel or petrol allowance? Save that, we no longer need to travel!
Everything can be done digitally. Use emails, calls, messages, video conference to achieve a paperless environment.
In a employer’s perspective, you also save a lot in utility bills such as electric and water, how great is that?
5. Work-Life Balance
The most common problems in middle-class people now are unable to achieve a good work-life balance. Using money to exchange time is always the most pathetic issue.
You can now spend more time with your family if you are working from home, since home is where your family stays isn’t it?
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So, it seems to be real nice to work from home, however, there’s always another side of the coin that tells you things differently, so let’s look into that.
I) Loss of Control
Your workers are now working from home, you can not see them or witness their productivity, so how are you going to know who to promote or terminate?
You also loss control, your workers will do things their own way and not YOUR way, how do you steer them back to the right path?
Don’t worry too much, their result equals to their productivity. Employees who have good productivity will give you good result on their work, so it’s easy to judge and you can be less bias on this too.
Remember, employees do not like being control, so let them do things the way they want, and they might surprise you one day. Of course they must know the taboo, rules and regulations of your company policy too.
II) Communication Barrier
“Hey Adam, please pass me that paper…wait..Adam is working from home.”
No more ordering your employees to do the maid work for you, what a bummer. Just kidding though, communications can be a barrier when all your workers are working remotely.
With the help of Skype, Teamviewer and many other conference software, communication is not a hindrance any more. What you need is a stable Internet connection and a decent headset, you are good to go.
There is so much more that we would love to share about the advantages of working from home, but we hope that we’ve already cover the major and ‘hit-to-the-right-spots’ points that you should know.
If you are an employer, start letting your workers to work remotely now, you may get a different result in productivity very soon (provided you have staffs that are dedicated though!).
If you are an employee and you are allowed to work from home, why not?
Do share with us about your ideas and tips about working from home!
Sanz Teoh
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