Is Working from Home Free from Any Drawbacks?

Sunday, September 14, 2008

The answer is 'Certainly not!'. Of course, working from home aids a great opportunity to make a worthy balance between personal life and professional life, but it has its own drawbacks. According to the research done by the Economist Intelligence Unit and IBM, working from home is not free from its own pitfalls. A survey done in Europe with 350 remote subjects revealed that the inadequate arrangement of management related support, required technological environment, appropriate measurement of performance level and proper skills and training, the subjects may end up with a strong feeling of isolation, under-appreciation, and mistrust, even though they work much harder than any 9-5 colleague working under the same environment and organization.

The greatest challenge faced by the working from home system is the coordination of work and the remote workers and meeting the required deadline. Over 40% of the subjects reported that they were feeling underprivileged, since they do not have the opportunity to take part in the informal 'water cooler' conversation, which is a significant part of the 9-5 system. Apart from this socialization option, they also reported that their feeling of deprivation includes not being able to be an active listener of the developmental issues of the concerned companies and other opportunities. Another important concern involves in relation to trustworthiness in their organization. This is especially common in the context of UK.

Apart from all these things, over 61% subjects reported that working from home does not secure the work –life balance at the level that they were actually seeking. Checking emails even in the evening or in the weekend with a fear of missing something important is mudding their work-life balance to a significant extent. Well, a considerable number of respondents reported that regardless of all these pitfalls, they do not really bother about their promotion, while working from their own home.

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