Working From Home?

The topic of working from home comes up a lot when I discuss my job. A lot of people ask if I work from home, and when I start going down the road why that isn't necessarily possible they start to question why not. Yes, I would love the opportunity to work from home but these people who have beg to differ. Their stories appear to have a pattern, it's great for a few weeks but really starts taking it's toll on me.

I agree that with technology I could do about 85% of my daily activities off site via a secure connection. My last job provided me with a laptop to do just that but still required me to come in everyday. There was a time here at work where working from home was the lateset thing and the company offered it to employees who could manage it. However over the past 3 years it has been phased out and no one is allowed to solely stay offsite.

The main reason? People need to see you and you need to see people. You need people to be available and you need people that are reliable. Believe me, I work with a project that has a lot of different groups of people involved and when someone is out of the office or even takes a long lunch, production grinds to a halt. People get frustrated and eventually deadlines are missed. Even at my last position which didn't involve as many people, work still did not get done as well when someone wasn't there. I am not talking about scheduled leave either. I'm talking about when people came in late, left early, or took long lunches. Mainly not keeping normal work hours. Which is the primary reason why someone wants to work at home, to work when they want to.

Unfortunately that is the bottom line, the company is paying you to work when they want you to and expect you to be available. Until you have enough money to run your own company or you work for someone where you are the sole employee in your area then you pretty much are stuck. The idea to work from home was a nice fad in the 90's but has run it's course and been exposed.