Working from Home
When people think about a job, they usually think about going to a certain location every day and either sitting at their desk or taking their place around some sort of machine. Granted that many jobs do require the worker to be there in order to operate the equipment or get in direct contact with the customers, but plenty of others do not and people shouldn’t need to leave their homes for them.
I’m mainly talking about the jobs that require working on a computer. What can you do on your work computer that you can’t do on your home computer? And with the advances in broadband connections, communication with bosses and coworkers is just as easy from home as it’d be at work. After all, many companies use e-mail and instant messaging for internal communications anyway.
Some will claim that will raise security problems, but no security can do more than delay a determined hacker anyway. And if a person is going to tell their password to another, or write it down and leave it where others can find it, they’ll do that whether they work from home or not.
From the employee’s point of view, working from home means, first and foremost, less stress, especially if the employee can more or less decide on their work schedule. That’s something you can’t put a price tag on and in itself is enough to make the option an excellent one. But there’s more! Not needing to travel to and from work certainly means less expenses, and those expenses are further reduced if you factor in how some people are more likely to buy things on impulse if they happen to see them in a shop window when they’re coming back after a stressful day at work. And then there is the time saved when you’re not wasting any in transit and the chance to mix work, housework and fun in the most effective way. All these things mean that an employee working at home will be better off than one doing the same job in an office even if they’ll earn less money.
Looking from the employer’s point of view, an employee working in an office requires a lot of expenses that would vanish if that same employee would work from home. I’m talking about the physical space required, the services and devices that provide decent working conditions, the desk and chair, the computer and the software installed on it, the Internet connection, electricity, water, any other things the employee needs for their job and any other expenses associated with the maintenance of the extra space and equipment. And the savings are further increased when adding the potential of offering slightly lower pay to the employee working at home. Which in turn means being able to offer their goods and services to their customers at lower prices while keeping the same profit margins, which usually means more customers and therefore even greater profits.
So, if everybody stands to gain from it, why isn’t it being practiced more?
While some are likely going to say that some people working from home are less likely to actually do their work, I think there are ways to check on their progress without actually looking over their shoulder, if only you’d be willing to work them out so things will go smoothly. And that brings us to what I think is the real obstacle, namely people unwilling to change the “tried and true” ways for something new, even if it’s obviously better, and also bosses who are too controlling and unwilling to lose the direct control they have over subordinates that they can physically watch over.
But how long will this situation last? How long will we let it last? Because, for better or worse, through action or inaction, people shape society. If one person goes against society then they’ll be crushed, but if enough others support them then society will change to suit their desires. So, asking everybody and nobody in particular, when are you going to turn the tide?
