Remote Working AntoinetteO

Working from home is not for everyone. 

My advise to people considering this mode of work would be to ask:

- Do you need face to face contact with colleagues every day?
- Do you need to be physically in the office to access systems or facilities to do your job?
- Do you need to be in the office to see customers face-to-face every day? 

If the answer to these questions is NO, then you could consider working from home.

But there are other factors to take into account.

- Will you personally, or your team's effectiveness suffer from lack of face to face contact?
- Will your relationship with your management hierarchy suffer if you are not physically in the office every day?

If the answer to these questions is YES, then you are not an ideal candidate work working at home.

And even if the answers to all the above questions seem to favour working outside your company's office, you have to take into account your own ability to self-motivate.

Initially, I found it difficult to concentrate on my work tasks while at home because I was distracted by the personal activities I could engage in. Also, I was distracted by the lack of noise. I know this sounds odd, and might be a personal thing, but the lack of background office noise led to my looking for distraction.

My advise to anyone interested in working from home is to go into it slowly, if you can. Start by trying out this option one afternoon per week, one day per week, then a couple of days per week, and gradually building it up. This is so you can get used to working in this new environment without loosing the option of working on your company's site.

You also need to consider your work systems. If you convert to being a full-time work from home employee in one go, you do not have the time to test how the different work systems you need to do your job will work in this new environment. This could be as simple as the need for a printer or a fax, to have a reliable internet connection, to have an affordable and reliable phone connection, ...

By encountering and overcoming the possible problems gradually, you can do so (hopefully) without negatively affecting your work output.

So consider "Working from Home" through the following questions:

- Is it adapted to your job function?
- Does it suit your personality?
- Is it allowed and supported in your company and by your management?
- Is it technically possible?
- Can you do plenty of trial runs?
- What information sources are available to support you in this transisition
- How will the different work systems you will need to use in your new work environment function

And overall - can you take it Slowly and experiment with adapting your work-from-home environment to suit you (I work with some source of noise on in the background)

Managers might find it a challenge to consider having employees work from home if they feel that they will loose control or if it is not an option that they would consider personally.  If you have an employee who has difficulty motivating themselves, then perhaps this is not a solution for them. But consider that a happy employee can be a more productive employee and if providing flexible work options might give your employee a more balanced and so happier work-home equilibrium, then this is certainly an option to investigate.

If I had been asked 10 years ago if I could organize meetings, projects and programs from a home office, I would have not known what to answer. If I had been asked if I could organize meetings, projects, and programs at a distance of 1000s of kilometres I would surely have said no. But I would have been wrong :)

Be open minded - but remain realistic

And overall, remain flexible.