A laptop and a good internet connection are necessary. Preferably dedicated workspace. Discipline, motivation and strict routine are also needed if you want to work from home.
This does not suit everyone, but distant work is gradually becoming a growing trend in the world.
Most often, in the remote work of specialists, a free schedule attracts. However, distance work does not always imply the ability to independently plan your day. Often, a specialist is required to remotely support any workflow at certain hours (for example, answer calls). In this case, there is no talk of a free schedule, however, it is quite possible to combine such work with anything else (with another job or with caring for a child).
The Story of Koki Pitzer
What attracted Koku to work from home was the flexibility she offered. A long trip to work followed by a 12-hour day will not be feasible when she becomes the mother of a little girl. Her employer, IBM, gave her the opportunity to work from home, and she became the first “virtual worker” in the technology giant in Brazil.
The family moved to Dublin, where Coca now works with another technology company - Retail inMotion, and she continues to work remotely. One of its main areas is working with teams to implement remote working methods. She gives valuable advice.
Structuring the day
She advises people who are considering working at home to structure their day. "You have to be very selfish and disciplined. Sometimes we have to create tough procedures that may not suit everyone."
She plans her week to include time for cleaning and cooking. She plans meetings through a teleconference when her children are at school. She looks after her three children when they return from school, and then immediately returns to work. Her children know that she is busy and should not be interrupted. This is a routine that the whole family is used to.
Disadvantages of Remote Work
Remote work is an attractive option, especially for parents, but it has its drawbacks. People feel lost when they work remotely. Commute the time between the place of work and the home, and this allows people to disconnect from work. There is no need to dress professionally, however self-care is important for self-esteem.
The importance of disconnecting from work
The main drawback of Koki is the disconnection from work. “You can easily burn out,” she said. “When you work from home, you deal with everything at once.”
A recent survey of Irish project managers by the company behind the PM Summit found that telework is a double-edged sword. Almost 80% of the project managers surveyed said that remote access made it difficult to disconnect from work.
Longer working day
Remote work also led to longer working hours for project managers, with 32% working from five to 15 hours every week.
Raymond Poole is the CEO of the PM Summit. “If you think about it now, when we are working on projects, there will be groups working in different territories around the world so that you can be connected with someone in the USA, and you must take into account the time difference,” he said. “ In the world we live in now, you can have a 24-hour work team. "
Remote access to staff
He agreed that employers should be aware of this, but the benefits for employers are that they also have remote access to staff, and remote access can extend over the weekend and well beyond normal working hours.
“They should, but the fact is that they don’t understand that they do it themselves. If you are an employer, you also work remotely and you also end late. You don’t even realize it until someone points you out.” , - he said.
Mr. Poole spent most of his life working remotely, running his own business. He believes that people may feel that working from home is good for them, but to get an accurate picture, ask your spouse or partner.
"Your partner may not think that this works because they don’t want to see the light in the bedroom when you are sitting with a laptop, answering emails all night, or you don’t listen to them when they talk to you after dinner, because you're busy looking at text messages from someone. "
We learn the opinion of Vanessa Tierney, co-founder of Abodoo. Abodoo is an Irish technology company with the ambition to become the largest global platform for smart workers. Like a dating site, it connects companies with people who work remotely from home.
Remote work is our future
Vanessa Tierney runs a business from home and makes money like that. She believes that remote work is the future.
Here in Ireland, she said she was offering employers access to talent. “We have an aging, highly skilled population that doesn’t necessarily want to retire. We have parents who do not return from maternity leave because the cost of caring for children does not make financial sense. We have employees who leave the company because financially, the days are too long, and it's expensive. We have half a million people who have left the country in the last ten years.
All this talent is available to employers if they accept what Ms. Tierney describes as “smart work.”
This is a kind of message to the market and employees that you trust them to work outside the office.
“Companies understand that this is important. There is a large percentage of people who are looking at deploying smart work policies, but I would ask this question: do any of your employees send emails from their mobile phone today when they leave the office? of your employees write documents on their Macs or laptops? If so, congratulations, they're smart workers, but you need a policy to protect yourself. "
Interaction with colleagues and friends
However, the workplace is not just a place of work. This is the place where you interact with colleagues and friends.
People who work remotely miss the social aspect of work?
“This is not entirely true because you can do it remotely,” said Miss Pitcher. - At the very beginning, I felt that this was not enough, and then I began to learn more about what it means to be a virtual employee. "I found messaging apps like Slack that let you have multiple channels."
She also worked with teams that drank beer every Friday through video conferencing. "I met teams that had parties. They will turn on the music, and everyone will be in party mode, wherever you are, connecting remotely," she said, indicating how everyone remotely connected via social networks.
Vanessa Tierney of Abodoo agrees. "You can establish a really strong connection with someone through the video, because you meet people who are in their background in the background. Naturally, you will have the opportunity to drink virtual coffee and say:" Tell me about your life and about , what are you doing".
One of Abodoo’s goals is to connect locally with people who have similar skills and want to collaborate, “so if you really miss people, you can get together.”
Ms. Tierney believes that telecommuting will be an upward trend for companies in the next two years. It's unavoidable.