Pros and Cons of Remote Working

When you’re a working parent everything you do centres around balance. The balance of your working and home life, the balance of getting your work done and being present with your children and finding ways of making the school holidays work. 

Unfortunately, unless you’re working for yourself, finding that balance can be hard work and more than that it can be stressful and it can be frustrating. It might just be that stress and tension between work and family life gives you pause to consider whether you should either start that business working from home or ask your boss to give consideration to remote working.

In this blog we explore how to make that transition between cubicle worker to home based worker and some of the pros and cons.

The Pros

Will working from home solve the problems associated with working in an office? Not all of them but it will change things for the better.

For a start there’s that commute. It’s gone. You get up, you’re at your desk and you’re ready to go. If you want to get a jump on the day you can start before everyone else is up. If you want to drop the kids off at school, you can take half an hour to get that done knowing you’re fully in charge of your schedule.

You’ll be there for breakfast and dinner, even if you do have to do a little work to catch up you’re a parent who can put their child to bed and that means a lot.

The Cons

Nothing’s perfect and one major drawback of working from home is the inability to switch off. You’ll find that hard. When you’re supposed to be relaxing in the evening you’ll be sneaking a look at your emails and the temptation to flip open your laptop then and there is going to require some discipline.

Other issues you might struggle with include a sense of isolation from the rest of your team and the sense that you might be kept out of the loop when you’re not face to face with colleagues.

If this sounds familiar to you, it can be a great idea to seek out office space for rent on a permanent or casual basis to suit your needs to help you experience the office culture when working remotely or from home. This can help to boost your mood, mental health, and productivity if you are missing the office environment.

Finally, there’s the school holidays. You’ve got used to working in your quiet office and suddenly your home is full of noise, mess and cries of “I’m bored”. While you can still be flexible with your workload and your hours, childcare options may still be necessary, either that or finding a quiet cafe to retreat to.

Working remotely isn’t for everyone and in some cases, if you work for a Commercial Flat Roofing company or other hands-on trade, you’re going to spend much of your time on-site in any case. But for those who spend the majority of their time away from home in an office environment, working remotely might just be the change that you need to get your work/life balance back on track and inspiring you to work smarter, harder and better without compromising on quality time with the family.