Determining Your Best Working Space

While the world has arguably been ready for teleworking for quite some time now, it took the COVID-19 pandemic to force people into their homes and make teleworking a necessity if computer-based work wanted to continue. As a result of this shift to home, we see more working teams than ever before who are not limited by geographic location, connecting to their computers sitting mere feet from the bed they slept in that morning.

Many people have embraced this change: for companies, a full telework situation means they no longer require huge amounts of office space to accommodate the entirety of their staff, limiting costs to providing a workstation for each employee to use in their own homes. For employees, it means no more commutes, less cost on car insurance and gas, and a large amount of extra time the employee can use that was otherwise spent getting to their office, setting up their workstation, and orienting themselves before settling down to work.

Of course, it’s not all positive news. Employers are now entirely reliant on the employee’s home internet to function, and if this should prove to be a problem, have alternative solutions (especially for those working with sensitive information) to allow them to continue to work while their home office issues are resolved. Employers also have far less control over employees who are less productive, as they cannot visit their employee’s home to ensure they are working. On the flip side, employees tend to have more distractions at home, whether that be something in their space, children crying, the temptation to do home chores while on work hours, among other potential distractions.

Another potential downside to working from home is that many people prefer to be social, and working from home can remove some of the appeal of the culture at work. Naturally, you still talk to your colleagues via video conferencing, but you miss out on the face-to-face interactions and office activities like lunches and cubicle talks. This is one of the driving factors that pushed many people to return to the workplace as soon as they could, because they really enjoyed being able to work with others in this much more social way.

Of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with either opinion, they are both completely valid ways of working that—depending on the industry—can each be used by those who prefer them to great effect. Naturally, some positions like physical retail stores require on-site working, but I can see some industries thriving and becoming far more efficient in a remote environment. Otherwise, I think the choice should be yours to experiment and find the working arrangement that works best for you. This is assuming that your workplace provides these options, rather than potentially selling their office to move to an all-remote environment or insisting on the opposite. At the end of the day, you will of course have to follow your managers’ wishes.

Have you been working remotely? Do you find it to be a better arrangement? Where and how do you like to work?