Nowadays remote jobs are getting more and more popular. Even though remote jobs are not new, many employers are getting more open towards working remotely and are getting less hesitant of letting their employees work from home. Especially for families with small children, working remotely seems to be an ideal outcome to balance their work life and personal life. Thus, in some cases working remotely seems to be a dream outcome, however for some people it does not work out at all. The many advantages of working at home, such as avoiding the traffic, getting more time for the family, and less distractions, are widely known and talked about.
The downsides of working at home, however, is something that hasn’t been widely discussed and known by most people. Therefore, in this blog post some downsides of working remotely are discussed.
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Lack of social connection with colleagues
Although you can easily interact with co-workers through e-mail, Whatsapp, Facebook, by calling them or through any other kind of communication tool, in most cases it is not the same as being at the office. At the office you can have face-to-face meetings, discussions with your co-workers, eating lunch together, or even some small chat with colleagues about anything. Working at home makes you feel isolated at some times, since your not actively part of the company structure of traditional workers. You can prevent this by going to work in coffeeshops, or go to the office at least once a month to prevent isolation form your colleagues and being seen as an outsider.
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Other kind of distractions
Working at home is often seen as being more productive and being less distracted by meaningless conversations with colleagues. However, this does not mean that when you work at home your are less distracted. For example, when you have small children or even a baby, you have to spend a lot of time taking care of them while you are working. But even without children you get distracted by things such as doing the laundry, washing the dishes, or even watching television at the same time. This could mean that for some your productivity will even be lower than at the office.
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Separating your work and personal life
Another disadvantage of working at home is that the boundary between workplace and homeplace is getting blurry. At the office you have fixed hours and when its time you go home. However, if you are a person with low self-control this might be more difficult at home where it is less easy to say that it is time to stop or even less easy to say that it is now time to start working. Therefore, it is very important to make a distinction between work and private life and set yourself fixed working hours to prevent working in your free time.
Thus, keep in mind that working remotely isn’t that always “fantastic” as some co-workers might say. If you have low self-control, it might be better to stick at the office rather than to work at home.
