Working Remotely: Happier and More Productive?

If you’re one of the millions of office workers who have been working remotely from home for the past year and a half, how have you been finding it?

Now that staff in some offices are starting to trickle back again, it’s interesting to hear how they feel about it. Most, it seems, miss the company of colleagues but can happily see the back of the commute. Then there is the whole ‘getting away from the family’ thing and a change of scenery.

For some people, a hybrid home/office working week is the most welcome scenario. After speaking to a group of workers, we compiled a list of the pros and cons of working from home:

Pros of working from home

Work more efficiently. Without the distraction of telephones ringing, colleagues coming over for a chat and general office banter, it’s possible to focus more on what you’re doing and get more work done.
More time for exercise. The absence of a commute means you can use the time saved to go for a cycle, a walk or exercise to a video in your home.
Less eating ready-made food. Having access to the kitchen at lunchtime means you’re less likely to go and buy a ready-made sandwich. Instead, you can have some homemade soup or a salad. The same goes for dinner; you have more time to make healthier meals from scratch rather than getting an oven-ready, over-salted meal. And on that note…
Avoid queues. Whereas before you were restricted to lunchtimes, now you can pop out when you know the supermarket or town isn’t going to be busy and get your errands done quicker. Just make up the time later.
Save a fortune on office wear. Now that you don’t have to smarten up every day, you don’t have to fork out on suits and new shoes every so often. Instead, you can put that money towards a great holiday.
Better work-life balance. Courtney Sabo @kopahq says: “For me, work-life balance isn’t about completely separating work from life and not working at night. It’s about finding a way to make the two work together in a state where I feel happy and fulfilled.”

Cons of working from home

Less of a social life. If you live on your own then going into work to chat with colleagues is a big part of being sociable. It can get a bit lonely living and working with just your own thoughts for company.
Overlap: work and home life. Often a big problem for freelancers is that they can’t switch off so that they end up working at night when ideally, they should be relaxing because they’ve already worked their eight hours that day.
Become a slob. Unless you’re strict with yourself it can be easy to fall into the habit of working in your PJs or wearing old tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt for days on end. Even brushing your teeth might not happen until 3pm.

So, how about you? We’d love to hear your comments on how you find working from home compared to being in the office.