Possessing a job that allows one to work at home is undeniably appealing, and for good reason. Employees can designate their own start times, structure their own lunch hours and break sessions, run errands whenever they wish, avoid overwhelmingly long commutes with crazy, road-rage-fueled drivers, and find numerous additional aspects that make work at home careers so enticing.
Self-discipline becomes a major factor, however, in the efficiency of those employees. All those perks require discipline to ignore, because often, they detract from the efficiency of the worker. Apart from dealing with perks, one must also maintain focus while unpredictable distractions emerge, and keep emerging. A crying child needs attention, for instance, because she is sick and cannot currently fend for herself. Once that situation is resolved, the employee returns to his desk, only to find the cat has strode across the keyboard and accidentally closed every application, rendering all his work void.
Depending on one’s job field, income can also be hindered by working at home. Freelance writers and designers, for instance, are unable to foresee which clients will contact them in the future. They can possess unequaled amounts of talent, but if they do not contact the right people, or delay contacting said people, their opportunities will be severely limited. Plus, applying to jobs over the internet has lead to employers regularly skimming resumes instead of scrutinizing them, or even simply dismissing them before even taking a cursory glance.
Employees who remain at a typical office position do not have to worry about an ever-shifting source of income, because as long as they retain the same level of production, their jobs will remain secure. Annual guaranteed salaries are the norm; sometimes, so are incentives and bonuses. At a traditional corporation, promotional options become available to reliable employees who stay at their given positions for long enough and prove themselves accountable and trustworthy.
They must also scour tons of job-hunting sources to find new clients. Income may prove unreliable, unsteady, and frequently stress-inducing. Though freelancers are sitting at home, they may not have enough in their savings account to make a punctual mortgage payment. Who knows how much longer those walls will be around?
Even with the downsides of freelance work, the benefits (mainly working at home) appeal to many traditional office workers. Those employees are becoming more cognizant of the viability of transferring from their business office to their home office, mainly because of so many communicative platforms that exist now. Those platforms allow employees to submit work that, in the past, could only be done at an office. With email, phones, faxes, Skype, etc., employees can now do the same work at home and simply send it to the supervisor. This convenience allows different categories of workers, such as new mothers or physically disabled, to produce the same level of work as their counterparts, but from a home environment.
A writer for Black Enterprise Magazine, Maria A. Reed-Woodward, noticed this trend of office workers transferring home and composed an article exploring the topic. The International Telework Association conducted a survey that found the number of teleworking employees grew from 41.3 million in 2003 to 44.4 million in 2005 and projects that number to climb to 51 million by 2008. Woodward quotes Jan Anderson, director of Midwest Institute of Telecommuting, who summarizes the general direction to which those statistics point: “There is a trend toward making jobs more mobile and permitting employees to have remote access to work from home.”
Those numbers are awfully reassuring for people who dream of their boss saying, “Yeah, sure, you can work at home.” But those people must first consider how well they function when left to their own devices, without supervision or direct motivation. Knowing the boss can slink around the corner at any given time is an extraordinary deterrent; it keeps employees from spending too much time with Tetris, Facebook, or fantasy football.
If one values his independence and strongly wishes to work at home, I suggest consulting some freelancers who operate under those conditions and asking them to summarize their daily activities, financial issues, and general states of their careers. That way, one can ascertain whether a position that allows them to work at home is genuinely befitting of their personalities and work habits, as well as their financial requirements.
James Scottworth enjoys writing articles regarding home business. Previously he’s penned about how to earn money taking surveys. If you’d like to get paid for surveys be sure and visit this free site that provides resources for finding paid surveys.