The overriding emotion any worker feels when they get the opportunity to work at home is one of glee! No more stressful commutes to the office, no more unnecessary expenses, and no more dealing with colleagues, but whether from the perspective of an entrepreneur or a worker, remote working comes with a lot of many questions, and from the point of view of the business leader, the concerns primarily relate to practicality. If happiness in the workplace is fleeting, then surely working from home is the solution? But is it really practical?
Shutterstock Licensed Photo – By Cressida studio
The Safety
It’s not really the burden of the business leader, but it’s something that every home worker needs to undertake an evaluation of if they want to make their space as productive as possible. If an employee doesn’t have a space to work from home but you are enforcing this upon a group or individual employee, then are they going to keep up their productivity? It’s unlikely. If you were to look at your home right now, would you be able to work there? If you had only the basement and it was full of junk, and you needed to waterproof your crawlspace, as well as fix the structural integrity of the place before you even could safely plug your computer in down there, then would you foist this type of working upon your employees and expect them to get on with it?!
The Feeling of Being Part of a Team
While remote working works great in theory, are you missing the vital ingredient that makes your team gel? This camaraderie could be the missing component of the happiness, workplace healthiness, and speediness of their work. Not to mention the fact that the company culture could be reliant on your team’s ability to work together. All this is gone when implementing remote working. And there are small efforts that can be made to ensure your team still gel, even though they are working in far-flung locations, it’s still going to be a task to recapture the magic that you once had, especially if you are implementing remote working due to financial issues…
The Budgetary Constraints
Although it’s a necessary evil, the financial constrictions can force you to be more creative
in how you push your business further forward. Remote working is something that
can work very much in your favor if you go about it the right way. But before you get to that point, it’s still necessary to invest. Whether you need better equipment, or a stronger firewall, these are always going to be a cost upfront if you need your employees to be more than productive at home or in a remote location.
Practicalities can be one of the biggest walls to overcome when getting a remote working setup to thrive, and there can be parts of your business’ personality lost if you decide to exclusively go down this route, but there’s no arguing that it’s a way to cut down on conflict, but increase dialog, by way of emails and the like. So, think on, but bear in mind the practicalities.
