According to a study conducted by FlexJobs, 84% of employees surveyed indicated flexible working conditions as a priority when applying for a job. In the last 5 years, the number of remote work employers in the United States alone has increased to 40%.
But is remote work really an ideal model and is it suitable for everyone?
Let’s put it straight – the image of remote work has been strongly idealized in social media. This is mainly due to the growing movement of digital nomads, a group of people who combine work and travel, most often to exotic places. The image of a digital nomad is a dream come true for many – only working a few hours a day, on a Thai beach. Preferably with a drink of fresh coconut juice.
In reality, however, only a small percentage of people live this way, and thanks to social media it is easier to build an idealized vision of such work – not necessarily in line with reality. Most of the remote employees, however, are people who do not change their place of residence every 3 months and work most often from their apartments. So what does such a job really involve?
Flexibility
Speaking of the advantages of working remotely, flexibility is usually the key argument. Up to 17 gives not only great flexibility in time, but also allows you to freely decide where we work from. For some it will be a beach in Zanzibar, for others it will be a favorite cafe – it is important that the selected place has access to the Internet and… is in a convenient time zone.
Flexibility in everyday life, thanks to which we can go on a trip to the office during its working hours, is undoubtedly a great value. Similarly, if we have children and in the case of their illness, there is no need to abuse the care leave. Even more so if we are surprised, for example, by a teachers’ strike – not everyone can and wants to take children to the office. Unfortunately, despite its many advantages, flexibility offered by remote work can also be a burden.
The lack of an imposed work time frame makes getting up in the morning more difficult (“I can start today exceptionally a moment later”), we lose the established order of the day (“I don’t have any call today, I’m staying in my pajamas”) and it’s harder for us to break away from work and consider the day as finished (“I’ll just finish this email yet”). Seemingly beneficial flexibility often makes us work longer, we have problems with concentration during the day and, as a result, spend the whole evening in front of the computer screen.
The possibility of additional work
There are two best known methods of work settlement – hourly and task. In the case of remote work, employers often choose the latter because, for obvious reasons, control of working time is more difficult. Then it is up to us whether we will complete all the tasks during the day in 6 hours or lose plenty of time during the day, resulting in ending work at 22:00. However, if we are able to effectively manage our time, then working remotely we have a chance for additional sources of income. By reducing our working time from 8 to 6 hours, we can use the saved 2 hours, for example, for additional orders or developing our own business.
Save time
Everyone who works in a larger city and does not live in the immediate vicinity of their office used to count how much time during the day they spend on commuting and returning to work. The average travel time to work is 41 minutes, which is an average of an hour and a half a day. This is the time that is most often wasted on crossings with public transport or driving a car. If we work from home, the problem of commuting to work practically disappears, and we gain additional time every day. We can devote it to things that we could not afford until now. Our loved ones will definitely appreciate the additional 6 and a half hours of our time a week. If we decide to spend this time on exercising or developing our passions, our body and mind will also thank us. We can also use the time savings to just rest longer!
A better-suited workplace
Wherever we are, employees always have different needs and requirements. It’s obvious that different people will feel differently in the same environment. Some will find it easiest to concentrate on working in a quiet, lonely workplace, while another person will need a lot more stimulus and human contact to work effectively.
Currently, most offices and the so-called “Open space” is adapted to people who do not need peace and quiet for maximum concentration. They are usually in an eternal confusion and it is difficult to find a place to work in silence. This means that many people will not be able to work as best they can in such an environment because there are too many “distractors” in there. It is especially troublesome when work requires analytical thinking and a lot of concentration. Thanks to remote work, we can directly influence what our workplace looks like and adjust it to work as well as possible. Of course, we will never avoid all distractions – there will always be calls, messaging notifications, e-mails, a refrigerator (if we work from home) and numerous other unforeseen situations. However, when designing our workplace ourselves, we can reduce these unnecessary elements to a minimum.
Remote work solves one more, non-obvious problem – is a great opportunity for many people with disabilities who, for various reasons, have limited mobility. Offices are often not adapted to them, and working from home will allow them to start a job, which at the same time will not be difficult for the employer.
Isolation
Remote work promotes the feeling of loneliness and isolation. As a social being, man needs interpersonal contact and work is the place where he spends most of his day. Remote workers can often be omitted by stationary workers in some correspondence, and not all messages will reach them at the same time. Especially if the communication systems in companies are not adapted to this mode of operation. Organizational culture also takes time to adjust to remote workers – in many cases it was most likely shaped to work in a single office.
When deciding on this type of work, we must take into account the aspect of being physically separated from the rest of the team and consider whether we will be able to compensate for the lack of company for several hours a day in some other way.
No office comfort
Offices come in all shapes and sizes, but they usually make life easier. Working in the office, we are sure that we will sit on an ergonomic chair adapted to work – it is definitely much healthier for our spine than all the crazy positions that you have already tried with the computer on the couch.
When undertaking work at home, it is worth considering expenses such as a suitable chair or desk – at our own expense. It is difficult to compete here with the trend of introducing new office amenities such as catering, massages or playrooms.
Legal loopholes
Setting up a home office is not the only problem. Labor legislation does not keep up with changes in the labor market, so the topic of remote work has not yet received proper coverage in the legislation. Many obligations of the employer and employee, such as occupational health and safety, are still unspecified. So what if we have an accident while working remotely or on the way to co-working? Probably we will not be able to count on the compensation we are entitled to when an accident occurs in the office or on the way to it.
More difficult implementation
Not all companies can boast of systematic know-how. When a new employee is hired, his main source of knowledge for the first few weeks is a different, more experienced employee. Thanks to this, all doubts are dispelled on an ongoing basis – in the case of remote work it is difficult because We do not have a more experienced person physically within our reach, whom we will constantly throw in an avalanche of questions. In theory, technology allows for instant communication, but due to its form, some issues may never be raised, because we will not conduct the conversation as directly as in verbal form.
It is much easier for employees who come to the office to get into work and feel the culture of the organization. Working remotely even after a few weeks, we may feel that we do not know everything yet and that we are not in tune with the team, which in the long run can lead to frustration.
However, this is not a dead end – this problem can be solved in two ways. Some remote employees are still onboarding in the office, and only after the trial period they work 100% remotely. An increasingly popular solution is also corporate reunions, where you can meet people with whom we talk almost exclusively on Slack every day. And we haven’t met anyone who regretted that instead of a desk and a computer, the company paid him a short surfing vacation.
Summary
Just like digital nomadism, working from home is still seen mainly through the prism of benefits. Unfortunately, in fact, we have to face a completely new set of challenges that did not exist when we were working in the office. We can, however, face each of them if we prepare properly. If you make sure that you have a suitable workplace and your employer will prepare an appropriate contract for you, including remote work – the most difficult ones are almost behind you. It remains to consider how you can make up for your relationship building by working primarily online. And what is the level of your self-control when the refrigerator, sweets and your favorite book are at your fingertips at any time.
