Predictors say to expect remote workers to make up 40% of the workplace by 2020, and it’s no mystery why. For employers, remote jobs mean less costs per employee. For workers, whole fantasies bloom of working in pajamas, blasting music, and sitting cross-legged with a bowl of cereal in your lap at 2 in the afternoon – all while on the clock.
It should come as no surprise that the greatest challenge for remote workers to deal with is a major warping of the work-life divide. Those who thrive on structure and rigidity at work (not to mention supervision) may have a tougher trim transitioning to remote work, so here are six common difficulties that come hand-in-hand with working from home.
1. Time management is up to you – You’ll be blessedly free of most forms of micromanaging when you’re working remotely, but the downside is that you’ll have to be your own micromanager, and you’ll have to be a real pest. Some recommend the 1-3-5 rule as a good guide to go by in terms of judging your productivity. To do that, put together a to-do list of work tasks: one major one, three medium-sized ones, and four smaller ones. Once you’ve checked them all off, consider that a productive day.
2. Distractions will double – Strip the structure of an office structure away, and you’re left with the challenge of dividing your work and home life while operating both from one central locale. Your cell phone, your cat, your roommate, the call to binge-watch the latest true crime documentary until you “feel” like working… these are all things you didn’t have to worry about when assigned a workspace in an office building miles from home. Tuning out the often appealing din of your home life is essential to getting your work done.
The Differences Between Remote Work and Telecommuting
3. You’ll miss the face time with coworkers – Face-to-face interaction is an important element of human communication, and even with apps like Skype offering a close approximation, you’re still going to miss several important streams of info and feedback when you’re not sharing an office with your coworkers. You’ll have a much harder time networking and making friends, and will have to doggedly schedule external meet-ups to stoke the team camaraderie and pick up the casual secondary knowledge that doesn’t make the cut in emails or Slack meetings.
4. Tech issues will pop up – And you’ll be at the mercy of those tech issues, since you’re working remotely, depending on your computer or your smartphone to keep you tethered to your coworkers and boss. So have backups to back-up your backups, and prepare for the inevitable afternoon when you’ve got your work ready to show but no way to get it in front of the necessary eyes because of hardware issues.
5. Get used to time zone discrepancies – You don’t have to work from a central office anymore, so neither does anyone else. With room to roam, you’ll inevitably have to deal with some coworkers who operate in a different time zone than you. Whether this means a conference call at 11:30 at night or 5:30 in the morning, remember that you get to participate in your pajamas and learn to compromise a little.
6. Feeling unseen – There may come a point where you feel that all the work you’re doing for your company, good and bad, is being overlooked because of the simple fact that you’re not sitting there just a few paces from your boss or manager’s office door. This means you’ll have to work all the harder to keep on your employer’s radar as a valuable commodity for the company. It’s just another new factor of the evolving work-from-home model.
