The desire to work at home has inflicted multiple workers over the past few years. The numerous benefits inherent in home work make leaving office cubicles seem a worthwhile endeavor. When one decides to work at home, he has the opportunity to choose when he wakes up, when he begins working, whether he wants his own brand of coffee or prefers traveling to Starbucks and setting up his workspace there, with human company and freshly-brewed lattes surrounding him. The scenery is much more appealing than simple gray office walls.
Self-discipline becomes a major factor, however, in the efficiency of those employees. All those perks require discipline to ignore, because often, they detract from the efficiency of the worker. Apart from dealing with perks, one must also maintain focus while unpredictable distractions emerge, and keep emerging. A crying child needs attention, for instance, because she is sick and cannot currently fend for herself. Once that situation is resolved, the employee returns to his desk, only to find the cat has strode across the keyboard and accidentally closed every application, rendering all his work void.
Depending on one’s job field, income can also be hindered by working at home. Freelance writers and designers, for instance, are unable to foresee which clients will contact them in the future. They can possess unequaled amounts of talent, but if they do not contact the right people, or delay contacting said people, their opportunities will be severely limited. Plus, applying to jobs over the internet has lead to employers regularly skimming resumes instead of scrutinizing them, or even simply dismissing them before even taking a cursory glance.
Freelancers must earn their income based purely on the amount of work they produce, not necessarily how many hours they spend doing the work. However, employees at financial firms, for instance, may receive salaries based on their positions in the firm, not necessarily their relative talents or production rates. Employees of large corporations can climb the proverbial “ladder” simply by sticking around long enough to reach the next rung. Freelancers do not possess that kind of security.
Freelancers do not have that kind of security. When searching for those possible clients, the internet has become the most common medium for submitting applications. But this medium has multiple setbacks, specifically that employers briefly skim applications and resumes, and summarily dismiss them upon encountering one error or one minor unmet requirement. Many perfectly acceptable freelancers go unnoticed simply because of the abundance, bordering on excessive, amounts of applications employers receive from one posting on Craigslist, causing them to arbitrarily ignore applicants.
Freelancers are not the only category of workers who operate from home, however. People already associated with big companies, and whose positions usually entail office work, are discovering their obligations may be fulfilled from their house. This accommodation by a company, often referred to as “telecommunicative” work, can eliminate stressful commutes, allow pregnant women/new mothers to watch over their children without quitting work, and even allow disabled persons more opportunities to make worthwhile contributions.
A writer for Black Enterprise Magazine, Maria A. Reed-Woodward, noticed this trend of office workers transferring home and composed an article exploring the topic. The International Telework Association conducted a survey that found the number of teleworking employees grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2005 and projects that number to climb to 51 million by 2008. Woodward quotes Jan Anderson, director of Midwest Institute of Telecommuting, who summarizes the general direction to which those statistics point: “There is a trend toward making jobs more mobile and permitting employees to have remote access to work from home.”
Those numbers are awfully reassuring for people who dream of their boss saying, “Yeah, sure, you can work at home.” But those people must first consider how well they function when left to their own devices, without supervision or direct motivation. Knowing the boss can slink around the corner at any given time is an extraordinary deterrent; it keeps employees from spending too much time with Tetris, Facebook, or fantasy football.
If one values his independence and strongly wishes to work at home, I suggest consulting some freelancers who operate under those conditions and asking them to summarize their daily activities, financial issues, and general states of their careers. That way, one can ascertain whether a position that allows them to work at home is genuinely befitting of their personalities and work habits, as well as their financial requirements.
James Scottworth loves to write articles about home business. In the past he’s penned about how to earn money taking surveys, and why taking surveys for moneycan be a great part time job for almost anyone.