Working From Home – The Reality

I will spare you the usual thoughts about working from home.  There are many articles already out there about how to set up a home office so you can work from home and how to convince your boss to let you.  And it all sounds great on paper.  But what about some of the realities you face that those articles don’t talk about.  Employers and employees are both to blame for the fact that telecommuters aren’t taken seriously all the time.

There is a reason some people in offices snicker when others say they are “working from home.”   There are two kinds of working from home – the “I need to be home for the cable guy/plumber/electrician” and the scheduled, regular work from home.  For those of you who very occasionally work from home due to an unspecified bump in your personal lives.  Please do the rest of us a favor…either take a personal day, a ½ day or truly work from home.  Be realistic…if you’re going to goof off and only get a few hours work done, be honest with yourself and your employer.  Don’t paint the rest of us who work from home regularly and put in a full day with your brush.  It’s not fair and it’s simply not nice.

For those of you who work from home or manage those who do…you know the drill.   There are lots of obstacles to be overcome to make the arrangement work.

Employees:

Have reliable, regular childcare – television shows and the media portray parents working from home in a ridiculous light.  While it sounds great to be working with your kids around, it doesn’t work.  You can’t take a conference call and not expect to be interrupted by your toddler who thinks they are the only important person in the whole wide world – and they are.  Just be sure someone else is making them feel that way while you work.

You might need a “going to work” routine – initially I did this so my 3-year-old could understand that while mommy is still in the house, she isn’t available but it also helped me transition from home life to workday.  Here’s how it goes.  I get up and do my regular mommy stuff with my daughter…out of bed, a cartoon, breakfast and then maybe a puzzle, game or book.  Sometime after our nanny arrives I give my daughter a kiss and tell her “mommy has to go to work now.”  I then head to my workspace and close the door and get an hour or two under my belt before emerging.  It eases the transition for my daughter and for me and I’m much more productive from the moment I sit down at my laptop.

IM = face time – choose an IM vendor and have your whole dept. set up an account.  This way you can have a conversation with your boss and coworkers without being there.  It is also a good way for your boss to notice that you are available for a chat or an update.  It’s a great tool for transparency – but be warned, if you appear available on IM you should be available.

Make friends with IT – They are the ones who will help you connect with the office.  While it is their job, you may not be their priority.  You can help become a priority by being nice to them, even when you can’t log in.  Since they were helping me out to work from home, I would thank them by occasionally taking one or all of them out to lunch.  And hey – I have no idea about the tech gobbley gok so they clearly could have made my life difficult if they wanted to…I gave them no reason to want to.

Don’t apologize for telecommuting – if someone schedules a meeting on your day from home.  Don’t apologize to them that you can’t be there.  Reach out to them and explain that you usually work from home on that day so what telephone number should you call to be part of the meeting.  I would go even further sometimes.  Since I had dedicated childcare if I thought the meeting important enough I would come in to the office for part of the day.  This was an occasional occurrence for me.  If your employer is constantly asking you to come in on days you telecommute you may not want that to be an option available to them.

Deliver your deliverables – nothing hurts telecommuters more than others who don’t get their work done well and on time.  If you are not going to work well from home or if you find you aren’t productive there, re-work your arrangement.

Employers:

Ask questions – when I first suggested working from home one day a week my supervisor, who is a parent, asked how I was going to be sure my child wouldn’t interrupt me every few minutes.  That is when I realized I would definitely need dedicated childcare and a private space to work.  It was clear to me that she was taking my request seriously enough to be sure it would be successful and I needed to as well.

Communicate clearly – if your employee knows their work assignments, goals and deadlines they should be able to work from anywhere.  If those are not communicated well you may be setting them up to fail.

Check in early and often – you will want to be sure your employee is doing their job and while you need to trust them, you should also get regular status updates on projects.  These should give you a better idea if the arrangement is working.  Once it is working then trust your employee until they give you a reason not to.

Punish offenders not everyone – should a deadline be missed, or a worker not be available when you need them, make sure that is noted and talked about openly.  If your company has consequences impose them.  But remember just because one worker has a problem regularly and telecommuting is not right for them, it doesn’t mean it isn’t right for others in your group.

Get more by sweating the small stuff less –a former boss and I were great communicators and good workers.  I would check in with her on IM if I was having a slow day.  She would either send more work my way, or sometimes, tell me not to sweat it and I could head out for a run, or go to the playground, or visit my dad in the hospital.  It was a great relationship.  And I made sure to go the extra mile on any important project for her.

I now work from home everyday.  And for those of you who think that is the ideal, I’ll tell you, I miss having an office to go to…not everyday but a couple of days a week.