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Recently I celebrated my one year anniversary at my workplace, and damn that year has gone fast. I enjoy my job and the people I work with as they’re all pretty laid back and we have similar interests. I have ‘weird’ shift patterns at work Saturday through to Tuesday and on the weekends it is only a few of us in the office and I know a lot of us wish we could work from home as nobody else from other departments is in. I often wonder what it would be like to work from home and if I would get the same level as work done. As someone who suffers from mental health issues, I do think on my bad days it would be easier to work from my bed on a laptop, but on my good days, I enjoy the social aspect of work. After reading some research from National work from home day (there really is a day for everything, isn’t there?) I was curious as to why some people can work from home and others can’t.
I found out that the major reason as to why people can’t work at home is due to security reasons, which makes total sense from a business point of view. As you can never be too careful with that stuff, but I often feel like my quality of work would be better from home, sitting at a desk for the majority of a day can often be draining mentally and physically. Plus the office can be loud and it can be hard to zone out. Startup Donut wrote a great article surrounding these issues, based on a survey created conducted by Seareach they advise “Flexible working leads to happier, healthier, more productive employees … allowing employees to work from home is a really effective way of empowering them to manage their stress levels and stay in control of their overall health. Plus, if an employee does get sick but is still able to work, instead of infecting the whole office, they can work in the comfort of their own home.” Being able to work from home I feel is something that may benefit me but like some workplaces mine needs to have a reason to allow you to do so.
I can see the pros of allowing employees to work from home, but I can also see the cons too. Allowing some staff to work from home but not all, can be a challenge as it may end up with other colleagues resenting those who can. As well as, the teams would not be as close as they are with everyone working together on a daily basis as they would see each other less. Overall, I would prefer doing half and half, as somedays I love going to work, seeing the people I work with and learning new things. However, on those days when I am struggling with my mental health or have had a bad nights sleep and much prefer my own company working from home would be ideal. But also I know that I can lack drive and motivation a lot of the time and I wonder if working from home would enable this even more, or whether it would spur me on to work harder? I mean music playing all day and having my bunnies roaming around sounds ideal!
