WORKING FROM HOME

IT’S NOT FAIR….just as I venture into the workplace with a view to doing quite a bit of work from home, the winds of change doth blow.

Marissa Mayer, newly appointed CEO of Yahoo! has bannned all 11,500 employees from working from home, which has caused a massive stir amongst the staff. She says “speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo! and that starts with physically being together”. This is quite a body blow to the assumption that with all our online activity we can work from wherever we want and still be as productive.

So what do you think?

Personally, I love working from home. If my children aren’t around to distract me, I can get a lot done. However, having been spending more time in an office than anywhere else of late, I can certainly see the advantages of surrounding yourself with other members of staff. For the first few weeks I kept forgetting to offer those around me a cup of tea or coffee when I went off to make one – so used to simply looking after myself have I become. BUT after nearly six months of virtually full time work I have loved being embraced by the one big mass of collective enthusiasm for a common cause. The chats, the brainstorming, the banter, the team building, the support….it’s been amazing and I’ve learnt SO much more from being in an office than being at home on my own. Not only that but it has helped me get on the office radar. If I had spent the last six months working from home I’d know nothing about how the company worked. Wouldn’t be able to understand the bigger picture and most of the people in the office still wouldn’t know my name.

What’s more, although it’s taken me a while to get used to the no wall approach and to switch off when somebody else is talking to a client on the phone, I have found that once I’m there, physically behind a desk, all my focus is on the jobs to hand. I don’t think about anything else. It’s meant that I have eight straight hours to devote to work. That wouldn’t be quite the same if I was at home. I’d speak to the bank, collect my kids from school, do a supermarket shop, feed the cats, tidy up….

So I can see the advantages of both. I like being sociable again in an office and feeling part of a team. But, my children are older and can fend for themselves until I get home….

Not quite the same if you have very young children.

Getting the balance right, as ever, is key.