teleworking | Telecommute Job Online

If you, your company, or organization haven’t already, you must follow the growing trend of telecommuting or working from home and moving more jobs online, not because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but because this is the way businesses will be operated in the future.

Worried mother holding baby and talking on smart phone at home office

The government has led the way by being adaptable and prepared to conduct itself amidst any threat to continue to have work done remotely from home in case of a major terrorist attack, biological warfare, or natural disaster.

Many businesses who are refusing to adapt or are unable to adjust their business model to accommodate shelter in place and pandemic restrictions are rapidly falling by the wayside, allowing only the powerful evolutionaries to survive.

Before the lockdowns were initiated, 75 percent of all workers were confident, that if they were required to stay home, they could effectively perform most, if not all, of their work from home.

For the companies, businesses, organizations, municipal, and federal government agencies that have quickly adopted telecommuting and working from home, they report increases in employee productivity anywhere from 15% to 55%.

Overhead costs to accommodate workers telecommuting during the lockdown been greatly reduced as having to pay for brick-and-mortar facilities for workers can be nearly eliminated, while workers are taking more responsibility for their own performance, requiring less management.

And for the most part, the teleworkers are loving it.

Are teleworkers here to stay?

Teleworkers, just as much as their contemporaries, were growing tired of being among the frantic rat race, and found a sense of empowerment from gaining more control over their quality of life, as they claim to be able to maintain an effective balance between life and work by telecommuting.

Being able to make adjustments to one’s work schedule to make room for appointments, family issues, or errands, offers sensible satisfaction to workers with families. They eat healthier, have less stress, are able to spend more time with family and friends, as well as more leisure time.

Employers who are allowing their employees to work from home are enjoying the fact that unscheduled and sick leave numbers are down 75%. And it’s no surprise because you could continue to work from home with a cold without the fear of spreading it to coworkers. In fact, you could still telecommute while on quarantine. And if you go out for a surgery or treatment, you are apt to return to telework much sooner than a job on campus.

While most people are feeling relief from the daily struggle of life, 80% of those who are confined to their homes without work, would rather be working from home, are willing to take a pay cut to do so, and they are envious of those who are teleworking in these unprecedented times.

The lockdown has placed undue stress on local law enforcement with the rise in domestic violence calls, but this has been offset by a huge reduction is traffic accidents due to the huge reduction in commuting traffic to and from work.

It is likely that this is the new normal, that telecommuting will replace archaic commuting to and from work following the pandemic. Look at the benefits.

Rural employees can work for metro-area employers with no problem, greatly expanding HR’s access to new and emerging talent. Disabled workers may be as much, or more, productive as their non-disabled peers. Discrimination is nearly non-existent. Personality conflicts among the workforce are all but eliminated.

Employee performance is evaluated on performance only.

Employees may continue to interface with their families or act as caregivers without affecting their work status. Disabled workers need not fret over figuring out how to make travel considerations.

Telecommuters enjoy an extra two to three weeks’ worth of free time every year, simply due to working from home and not having to commute.

You might things are all fun and games telecommuting and working from home, and there are moments, for sure, when there is much to be grateful for while being able to work from home, but there is a dark side of teleworking that is affecting those who are trying to adapt to this new work model.

Certainly, the upside of moving your job online so that you can work from home is being able to eliminate the time and costs associated with the commute to and from work, while gaining the ability to multitask a bit while performing your ordinary work duties.

There is no way you could do laundry or enjoy the other benefits (including working unshaven or undressed for work, et al.) that come from working at home if you were still having to go to work elsewhere.

Here are the top 5 issues among the dark side of teleworking.

Top 5 Complaints of Teleworkers

1 – Childcare

The biggest problem to rear its ugly head becomes painfully apparent to telecommuters who are parents of children and are trying to balance childcare with effectively teleworking, especially if they are school children who are actively telelearning or being homeschooled. Unless you already have adequate staff at home to help fill the void, this can be a very dark place and a huge drain on your resources.

2 – Social Interaction

Then there is the lack of social environment, saying “Hi,” to your coworker as you pass by or even those brief water cooler conversations, all gone. If you valued these brief interludes with coworkers, not having them, can be missed, and you are likely not to know how important these little social interactions were to you, until they were gone.

You can try to replace it with little Zoom visits, but clearly its not the same thing. Plus, Zooming is not spontaneous, and it can interrupt your workflow on either end or both simultaneously.

3 – Productivity Pressure

When you are working at an office which is being monitored by a supervisor, there is less accountability because management can see your performance in real time. When you are working from home, it is all on you. You are the only one responsible to account for your productivity, and you know if your output is not more than you were able to do before you started working from home, it may affect your earning capacity.

So, you cheat.

Things may be a little loosely structured at home, and you find yourself not working as fervently as you did before you started telecommuting, so you try to make up for the lack to make sure your numbers remain good. You stop taking breaks, work through lunch, and work late, or on weekends in order to maintain your productivity to assure your survivability and success.

This is unhealthy in the short-run and even more so in the long-run.

If this applies to you, you are probably looking forward to returning to work, which is a more comfortable environment where you can perform without the stress of having to manage yourself much.

4 – Inadequate Home Office

Not all homes have the space to accommodate a full working office. While one can make do with what you have to work with for a while, it is a different proposition, this trying to carve out a makeshift work area to get things done is nothing near having a dedicated space with the supplies necessary to perform one’s job duties.

Not having a separate space to do your work emphasizes your lack of separation.

5 – Lack of Separation

Unless you have a separate office space in your home or live completely alone, life is going on all around you while you are trying to get things done. You need to be able to isolate yourself, at least somewhat, from the goings on around the home while you are working.

These issues concerning childcare, social interaction, productivity pressure, inadequate home office, and lack of separation are among the most pervasive challenges for telecommuters among the dark side of teleworking.

Now that you know that these are the most common problems experienced by those who just like you are trying to keep up with the other teleworkers who are thriving in there work from home environments, you can rest assured that you are not alone.

You are not among the minority. You are just doing the best you can with what you have.

But you can count yourself among the thrivers, if you can make some changes, enough to further isolate your home working environment from the dark side of teleworking.

What changes could you make?