As someone who works in IT, I enjoyed the ability to work from home occasionally even before 2020. The idea always fascinated me.
You mean, I can work and not leave my house??
Sweet!
I loved the idea. I felt more productive and honestly had more fun with work. Instead of being stuck at my desk at a corporate office, I could work from the comfort of my recliner or desk at home. Lunch was only a few feet away — in my kitchen. If I had some free time, I could catch a few minutes of a TV show or read.
Then 2020 happened, and companies big and small started scrambling to allow their employees to work from home.
Good.
My hope is that it stays normal.
The shift to working from home
I think some companies had never seriously considered the possibility. (And that frustrates me, honestly.) They knew that people needed to keep working, and they knew that being all together in an office setting was probably not the best during the pandemic.
So working from home became normal.
Where things are currently
Currently, it’s pretty common to find people in lots of different roles working from the comfort of their own homes. I’ve had the privilege of working with many such people in my IT role. Some even work while living out of state.
You have to admit, that’s pretty cool.
No longer are we bound by the confines of a brick and mortar location. Nor should we be.
I personally work from home most days but one or so a week. I have a nice home office where I can comfortably sit or stand and do everything I need to do for my day job. Meetings, projects, emails, training, etc.
99.99% of it I can do from right here.
With the introduction of tools like Slack, Teams, Zoom, RingCentral, etc, I can host and join meetings from anywhere and even present to large groups of people without ever leaving my comfy desk chair.
And why would I want to?
Why I love working from home
If you can’t tell, I love the idea of working from the comfort of my house. The high gas prices don’t affect me quite as much because I’m not having to commute every day.
Since my wife (
, who you should totally follow and read her writing) also works from home, we get to spend more time together during the week. If I have a break between calls or working on tickets, I can run upstairs and see her for a few minutes and often have lunch with her.That’s something that wouldn’t be practical or maybe not even possible if we worked in separate physical locations, and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.
She has her office space, and I have mine. But we’re both able to work from the comfort of home. And that’s awesome.
If she’s busy and I have a break, I’m free to step outside and enjoy some sunshine or sit on the deck and watch the birds or chill on the couch watching a few minutes of a show before I need to get back to work.
It’s just a much more comfortable, more enjoyable work environment.
And that, I think, lends itself to better productivity and job satisfaction. I don’t have the stats to prove that, but that would be my guess. I can only speak for myself on that, I suppose.
It’s not all sunshine and roses
That’s not to say working from home is perfect. There are drawbacks, and in some cases it’s not possible. For some things — even in IT — we need to go to a physical location outside of our homes.
Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to fix a customer’s network without seeing it in person, for example. And it wouldn’t be possible for an electrician or plumber to work from home. At least not at the moment. (But what if they could?)
There are jobs that require being face to face with customers or in-person to accomplish certain tasks.
Some people simply aren’t wired for a work-from-home setup. They need in-person interaction with other people to stay on task or feel like a part of the team. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Someone who is extremely extroverted may not prefer to work from home. Someone who is introverted (like yours truly), might.
Let’s keep it an acceptable option
Right now, it’s typically acceptable to work from home. Not everywhere and not for all types of jobs, granted. But by and large, working from home is part of our culture.
And I like that. I don’t want that to ever change.
The way I see it is this: Unless there is a real, tangible reason that employees must be in the office, businesses need to be on board with letting them — even encouraging them — to work from home.
In years past, we couldn’t do what we can do today. It wasn’t possible to host huge meetings with the click of a button or control a computer screen remotely or collaborate on documents. Today, we have a vast array of tools specifically designed for people to work remotely with others from all over the world.
In the past, it would have been strange — maybe even the stuff of science fiction — to “meet” with others from hundreds or even thousands of miles away through a screen. That’s something that was relegated to the likes of Star Trek or time travel. But now it’s a reality.
It seems to me, we should be encouraging that.
If you have a day job, you might not prefer to work from home. But you should have the option to if your job is one that can be done from home.
If you’re an employer, I hope you’ll consider letting your employees stay home to work.
This isn’t 1990 or even 2010 anymore. We’re now more than 21 years into the 21st century. Isn’t it time our work environments reflected that?
Originally published at https://keyboardanddesign.com.