essay on advantages and disadvantages of working from home

11 Pros and Cons of Work from Home: Exploring the Advantages and Disadvantages

This advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay will explain the pros and cons of working from home.

Discover the advantages of flexibility and increased productivity, alongside the challenges of isolation and blurred work-life boundaries.

Gain valuable insights into the work-from-home phenomenon and make informed decisions about your own professional journey.

Dive into the advantages and disadvantages of remote work, and unlock the key considerations for finding the right balance in this engaging blog post.

Let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay.

Ah, the glorious freedom of working from home!

Picture this: You roll out of bed, grab a cup of joe, and dive into your work without ever facing the dreaded commute or office small talk.

It’s a dream come true for many of us, and it’s not just about the convenience of staying in our pajamas all day (although that’s definitely a perk).

In this part of the article, we’ll explore the numerous benefits of working from home that go beyond the comfy attire, showing you why embracing the pajama professional life might be the best decision you’ll ever make.

advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay

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From bidding farewell to the dreaded commute to enjoying increased productivity, improved work-life balance, and even saving money, the perks of working from home are undeniable. It’s a lifestyle that grants you the freedom and flexibility to design your work environment and schedule tailored to your preferences and needs.

So, if you’re still on the fence about embracing the pajama professional life, consider the advantages we’ve explored.

The absence of a daily commute allows you to reclaim valuable time, reduce stress, and engage in activities that truly matter to you.

The ability to focus in a distraction-free environment leads to heightened productivity and a sense of accomplishment.

Integrating work and personal commitments seamlessly ensures a healthier work-life balance, nurturing your overall well-being.

Moreover, remote work not only benefits you personally but also has a positive impact on the environment. Reduced transportation results in cost savings and a smaller carbon footprint, making it a win-win for your wallet and the planet.

Of course, working from home has its challenges. Loneliness, the need for self-discipline, and potentially blurred boundaries between work and personal life require careful navigation. However, these challenges can be overcome with the right strategies, such as establishing a dedicated workspace, maintaining regular communication with colleagues , and setting clear boundaries.

More about the disadvantages of working from home later.

In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards remote work, with many companies recognizing its benefits and embracing hybrid work models. As the world becomes more interconnected, technology advancements make remote collaboration seamless, enabling professionals to thrive in their homes.

Advantages of Working from Home Essay

Say goodbye to the commute.

Let’s face it—commuting can be a soul-sucking experience. Spending hours stuck in traffic or crammed into a crowded train is not exactly the ideal way to start or end your workday.

When you work from home, you bid farewell to the daily commute and say hello to extra time and reduced stress. Imagine reclaiming and using those lost hours for more productive or enjoyable activities. Whether catching up on sleep, exercising, or simply spending quality time with your loved ones, the lack of commuting opens up a world of possibilities.

Increased Productivity

Working from home offers a prime environment for enhanced productivity. You can focus on your tasks without interruptions without the usual office distractions. No more impromptu meetings or colleagues popping by your desk for a chat about the latest reality TV show. Instead, you can create a dedicated workspace tailored to your needs, free from distractions.

Moreover, the flexibility of remote work allows you to structure your day in a way that suits your preferences and energy levels. If you’re an early bird, you can tackle important tasks in the morning; if you’re a night owl, you can burn the midnight oil. You’ll accomplish more in less time by aligning your work hours with peak productivity periods, giving you a sense of achievement and a better work-life balance.

Let’s further explore the pros and cons in this advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay.

Improved Work-Life Balance

One of the most significant advantages of working from home is achieving a healthier work-life balance. Traditional office settings often blur the lines between professional and personal life, making switching off from work-related stress and responsibilities challenging.

When your office is just a few steps from your living room, you have greater control over your schedule. You can integrate personal commitments, such as attending family events, exercising, or pursuing hobbies, into your workday. This flexibility allows you to design a routine that aligns with your individual needs, leading to increased job satisfaction and overall well-being.

Furthermore, remote work saves precious time that would otherwise be spent commuting or getting ready for the office. This newfound time can be utilized for self-care, pursuing personal passions, or engaging in activities that bring you joy.

The result? You feel more fulfilled and energized, ready to enthusiastically tackle professional and personal challenges.

Cost and Environmental Benefits

Working from home can be kind to both your wallet and the environment. When you’re no longer commuting, you save on transportation costs, whether it’s fuel for your car or public transportation fares. Additionally, remote work eliminates the need for a separate work wardrobe, saving you money on professional attire.

Moreover, remote work significantly reduces carbon emissions associated with commuting. Fewer cars on the road translate to cleaner air and a smaller carbon footprint. By embracing remote jobs, you contribute to a more sustainable future and help protect the planet.

Also, one of the small benefits of working from home is that you can spend more time with your pets. Sometimes your dog or cat can feel lonely and that you don’t spend enough time with them. Remote work allows getting to know your pet closer and having quality time together. Basepaws review can also help you to know your pet better.

So, whether you’re a freelancer, a remote employee, or considering negotiating a flexible work arrangement with your employer, the benefits of working from home are waiting for you to embrace them. Say goodbye to the mundane office routine and embrace the freedom, flexibility, and personal fulfillment that come with the pajama professional life.

essay on advantages and disadvantages of working from home

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The Disadvantages of Working from Home: Balancing Flexibility with Challenges

Let’s continue our advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay by exploring the disadvantages of working from home.

The concept of remote work has gained significant traction in recent years, revolutionizing the traditional office environment.

While working from home offers numerous benefits, such as increased flexibility and reduced commuting time, it is important to recognize that it also comes with its fair share of disadvantages.

In this part of the article, we will explore the potential downsides of working from home, shedding light on the challenges individuals may face in this ever-evolving professional landscape.

Isolation and Lack of Social Interaction

One of the most common drawbacks of working from home is the feeling of isolation and limited social interaction. When employees are physically distanced from their colleagues, they miss out on the spontaneous conversations, brainstorming sessions, and the overall camaraderie that can foster creativity and collaboration. The absence of face-to-face interactions may lead to a sense of disconnection, which can impact job satisfaction and mental well-being.

Blurred Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life

Working from home often blurs the line between professional and personal life, making it challenging for individuals to maintain a healthy work-life balance. With no clear separation between the office space and home environment, it becomes tempting to work longer hours, leading to burnout and decreased productivity. Moreover, the lack of physical boundaries may result in constant interruptions from family members or the inability to switch off work-related thoughts, thereby adding to stress levels.

Distractions and Lack of Focus

The home environment can be full of distractions, ranging from household chores to family responsibilities. The presence of tempting diversions, such as household tasks, television, or social media , can significantly impact an individual’s ability to concentrate on their work tasks. Procrastination becomes easier, and maintaining focus becomes a constant challenge, potentially hampering productivity and overall performance.

Limited Access to Resources and Technology

While technological advancements have made remote work more feasible, it is undeniable that not all employees have equal access to the necessary resources and technology.

In some cases, employees may lack a stable internet connection, have outdated equipment, or face other technological limitations. These disparities can create barriers to effective communication, collaboration, and access to vital tools or software, thus hindering productivity and professional growth.

Reduced Career Development Opportunities

Working remotely can limit an individual’s exposure to various career development opportunities. In a traditional office setting, employees have the advantage of face-to-face interactions, networking events, and informal learning experiences. Remote workers may miss out on these crucial avenues for professional growth, potentially impacting their chances of career advancement and skill development.

Strained Communication and Collaboration

Despite the advancements in communication technology, remote work can still present challenges when it comes to effective collaboration.

Remote employees heavily rely on digital communication tools, such as email, instant messaging, and video conferencing. However, misinterpretations, technical glitches, and limited non-verbal cues can hamper effective communication, leading to misunderstandings and reduced team cohesion.

Building trust and maintaining strong relationships with colleagues and supervisors can be more challenging when working remotely.

Impact on Mental Health and Well-being

The work-from-home setup can have a significant impact on an individual’s mental health and overall well-being. The lack of social interaction, feelings of isolation, and increased blurring of boundaries can lead to heightened stress levels, loneliness, and even depression.

Additionally, the absence of a physically separate workspace may contribute to difficulties in disconnecting from work, preventing individuals from fully unwinding and recharging during their personal time.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Work from Home Essay: FAQ

What are advantages and disadvantages of work from home.

Advantages: No commute, work in your pajamas. Disadvantages: Lack of digital resources, feeling of isolation, home life and work life becomes blurred.

What are disadvantages of working from home?

Lack of digital resources, feeling of isolation, home life and work life becomes blurred.

Conclusion: Advantages and Disadvantages of Work from Home Essay

While working from home offers undeniable benefits, it is crucial to acknowledge and address the disadvantages that come along with it.

The isolation, blurred boundaries, distractions, limited resources, reduced career development opportunities, strained communication, and potential impact on mental health highlight the need for proactive measures to counter these challenges.

Employers and employees must work together to find solutions that foster connectivity, establish clear boundaries, and promote a healthy work-life balance. By recognizing and addressing the disadvantages, we can strive towards a more balanced and productive remote work experience.

As you can see, working from home offers numerous advantages beyond the absence of a dress code. Remote work has become a preferred choice for many professionals thanks to eliminating the commute to improve productivity, achieving a better work-life balance, and contributing to a greener planet.

So, go ahead and embrace the perks of working from home. Your pajamas will thank you! However, working from home offers many benefits that extend far beyond lounging in your favorite PJs.

To recap: The advantages and disadvantages of working from home bring both opportunities and challenges to individuals and organizations alike.

On the positive side, remote work offers flexibility, increased productivity, and reduced commuting time. It allows individuals to create a better work-life balance and offers opportunities for those with physical disabilities or caregiving responsibilities. Moreover, it enables companies to tap into a global talent pool and save costs on office space.

However, there are also downsides to consider. Working from home can blur the boundaries between work and personal life, leading to longer working hours and burnout. The lack of face-to-face interaction may hamper collaboration and team bonding, affecting creativity and innovation. Additionally, the absence of a dedicated workspace can create distractions and hinder productivity.

Ultimately, the decision to embrace remote work depends on individual preferences, job requirements, and the nature of the organization. It is crucial to strike a balance between the advantages and disadvantages, implementing strategies to overcome the challenges while leveraging the benefits.

Whether it’s a hybrid model or a fully remote setup, clear communication, efficient task management, and regular check-ins become crucial to maintaining a productive and connected workforce.

Overall, the rise of work from home represents a significant shift in the way we work. It offers unique opportunities for individuals and organizations to adapt to the changing landscape of the modern workplace.

By carefully weighing the advantages and disadvantages presented in this advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay and implementing effective strategies, we can harness the potential of remote work while mitigating its challenges, ultimately fostering a more flexible, efficient, and balanced work environment.

Readers, please share this advantages and disadvantages of work from home essay so people considering abandoning the 9 to 5 traditional workday discover this post.

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Benefits of Working From Home

Pro: more flexibility to take care of appointments and errands. .

Pro: Fewer interruptions from meetings and chitchat.
Pro: No commute time or expense.
Pro: More time spent with family.

Pro: You can often do your work when you're most productive.

Pro: you can get more done., pro: you can save money on your work wardrobe., pro: the ability to live where you want to..

One of the hardest things about committing to a 9-to-5 desk job is that it prevents you from being able to handle almost anything else that comes up in your life, whether attending a routine dentist appointment or picking a sick kid up from school. When you work from home, while you still have to meet your deadlines and be available when you say you will be, you generally have wider bandwidth to tend to other responsibilities without jeopardizing your job.

Pro: There are fewer interruptions from meetings and chitchat.

It's easier to get into a deep state of focused work when you're in your home office without colleagues dropping by and sitting down impromptu to talk about their weekends. Limiting unnecessary interruptions from your colleagues and boss is a big plus of working from home and is one reason many remote workers are often more productive than office-based workers. While you may need to dial in for specific meetings, you'll likely get a break from attending several others – many of which may be unnecessary to your role – that confront staff workers daily.

Pro: There is no commute time or expense.

You can save a lot of money and avoid wasting hours spent getting to and from work when your office is right down the hall. Avoiding traffic battles tops the list of benefits for some of those who work from home. Many remote workers also mentioned saving money by eschewing a pricey professional wardrobe unless they meet with clients.

Pro: More time spent with family.

Office workers must kiss their loved ones goodbye each morning when heading off to work; not so for virtual workers, who can work side by side with a work-from-home spouse or with kids who are learning in a digital classroom . By doing away with the commute time, there is more time to be spent with loved ones.

When you work in an office, your schedule is rarely your own. Between the aforementioned interruptions from colleagues and meetings, plus your boss hovering nearby with agenda items and to-dos, accomplishing your focus work may be a "catch as catch can" situation, grabbing time to think and compose important reports and communications between events that others have imposed.

It's still always essential when working from home to be mindful of your team's needs and be available to dial in for virtual meetings. But remote employees generally have greater latitude to select their time of peak productivity to do their most important work and – depending on who else is working at home with them – have more quiet time to hone in on tasks that require concentration.

A number of recent studies have confirmed the growing body of research that prove working from home can help you be more productive than you can in an office, with stats showing productivity increases of up to 77%. It makes sense when you consider the above points that you have fewer interruptions and can work when you’re at your best while working remotely.

In addition to saving drive time and gas expenses, the work-from-home crowd can generally save on clothing costs as well. While you may need to have professional garb at the ready for video calls (at least for your top half on camera), most who work from home have more freedom to wear what they want while they work.

While some employers have restrictions about where you can live as a remote employee and may change your pay according to the area you reside in, a huge perk of the remote life is the ability to choose your location without needing to worry about a daily commute. Even if you’re in a hybrid role or need to make occasional visits to the office for meetings, if you don’t need to drive in each day, you have a wider range of possible places to settle besides right near the office.

Cons of Working From Home

Con: no physical separation between work and leisure time. .

Con: Easy to misread cues via electronic communications.

Con: You have to make the effort to get a change of scenery.

Con: Less in-person contact with co-workers.

Con: You are not on-site for in-office perks.

Con: you have to be more self-motivated., con: some bosses may be biased against those who aren’t in the office..

Many who work from home lamented that they often find themselves working around the clock, since their labor has no definite start or end times; those lines can often be blurred. As a result, they sometimes feel as if they are always at work, making it difficult to shift to the post-work relaxation mode that many office workers take for granted.

The absence of an obvious division between the personal and professional realms means some remote workers get distracted by housework. Setting boundaries and sticking to them is important when you're working from home.

Con: It's easy to misread cues via electronic communications.

While few who work from home expressed feeling "lonely," as is typically assumed, many did point to the difficulty of getting the tone right through digital communication systems, such as email, chat, social media and text. Without body language, facial expressions and other cues, remote employees have to put in extra effort to maintain positive communications.

What can be a blessing can also become a curse in the form of cabin fever. Some freelancers and others who work from home lamented that where they work during the day is the exact same place where they'll be sitting later that evening; getting involved in their work often translates to spending a huge portion of the day indoors. Pre-pandemic, many stressed the importance of scheduling lunches and other meetings to keep them in the mix and avoid the rut of never leaving the house.

Con: There is less in-person contact with co-workers.

While you may have more time with loved ones when working from a home office, the flipside is less opportunity for face time (minus a screen) with people at your company. If your co-workers drive you crazy, then reduced time on-site might be a perk for you. But if you enjoy office-based camaraderie and like to be able to socialize with your team in person, then the remote life might make you miserable.

You can't swing by the break room and grab a doughnut or hit the company gym if you're working from home. This may be more of a disadvantage for workers in industries such as tech, with impressive on-site offerings like game rooms and chef-made food among their company benefits. If there's a perk you like about being in the office, then working from home may make you miss it.

If you’re the type of person who procrastinates working unless a boss is breathing down your neck, then you might find yourself underperforming in a work-from-home role. Remote workers have to motivate themselves to get the job done, which puts more onus on people working from home to manage their time wisely to complete their projects, instead of having someone else setting the timelines and spurring them along.

A study by researchers at the University of California at Davis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that “face time” – the amount of time that you’re seen at work either within normal business hours or outside of them – can affect how your boss and others perceive you at work. If you’re not in the office and others are, some managers may be either intentionally or unintentionally biased against you. You may find that your contributions aren’t noticed or appreciated as much by your team and may feel compelled to make extra efforts to keep on everyone’s radar screen.

Weighing the pros and cons of working from home has become even more important in the wake of the pandemic, since many companies are now giving their employees the option to not come back into the office. If you are given the choice to consider working from home permanently, be sure to think through each of the pros and cons of working from home to land on a solution that matches your priorities. Remote work has clear benefits, but no situation is perfect. Understanding the reasons to work from home – as well as the reasons not to – can go a long way in learning how to work from home successfully .

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Working from Home: Pros, Cons, and Strategies for Success

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Published: Sep 7, 2023

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Advantages of working from home, disadvantages of working from home, strategies for success in working from home.

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Working From Home: The Pros and Cons

You wake up at 8 a.m. with the sun streaming through the blinds. As you take a leisurely shower, you listen to the radio and hear rush-hour traffic’s a nightmare. Good thing you don’t have to jump in the car to head to the office. In fact, you don’t have to go to the office at all. Sure, you’ve got two deadlines to make by the end of the day, but that’s nine hours away.

At the moment, the more important question seems to be: coffee at home or a cappuccino from your favorite café down the street?

Does this sound like your typical morning? If so, you’re living the dream—the dream of working from home .

Key Takeaways

Working from home comes with the benefits of no commute, your own personal space, increased flexibility, and more money saved.
The downsides of working from home include social and professional isolation and lack of innovation from in-office interaction.
If you're self-motivated and introverted, working at home might be for you while if you enjoy being in the middle of the action, you might regret going remote.
After the Coronavirus pandemic, working from home has become more common and acceptable.
Recent studies show that employees are more productive when they work from home.

As the Internet has grown and allowed for faster connections, high-quality video calls, and the ability to send larger amounts of data, working from home has become as straightforward as working from the office.

Many employees consider working from home, at least one day out of the week, a work perk. Because an employee doesn't have to get up and get dressed or commute, it allows for more time to sleep, a less rushed morning, and money saved on not eating out during office hours.

For many employees, however, it's not an option. Kindergarten teachers, carpenters, and nurses, among many others, do not work remotely; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, where individuals were encouraged to stay at home, working from home became more common for such jobs, such as teachers.

With the right digital equipment, software tools, and mobile devices, more jobs can be performed remotely from home. Before the pandemic , 4.1% of the U.S. employee workforce telecommuted either half of the time or more. At the peak of the pandemic, this rose to 69%, showing that working from home can be done if needed, encouraging a greater shift to working from home once lockdowns eased.

Years before the pandemic, according to a 2013 study by Stanford University in collaboration with Ctrip, a Chinese travel agency, home-based workers said they were more productive, happier , and less likely to quit. The flip side? Those working from home were half as likely to be promoted as their office-based colleagues. They were also more likely to feel lonely. In the end, 50% of the home-based workers in the study requested to return to the office.

In the years since, working from home has become a lot more acceptable, especially by employers, and after the pandemic, a necessity. The pandemic demonstrated that working from home was possible without a reduction in productivity and preferred by employees.

Employees particularly believed working from home was better, with 70% of employees stating virtual meetings were less stressful with 64% preferring hybrid meetings.

Some studies showed that working from home is more productive . Individuals who work from home, on average, are 10 minutes less productive in a day, work one more day per week, and are 47% more productive.

Though working from home has shown to be more productive, it still socially isolates individuals that may gain positive health benefits from in-person interaction in the office.

Before taking the plunge, talk to coworkers, friends, and the people in your network, especially people who work in similar industries . Among your acquaintances who have worked from home, what challenges have they faced? Have they seen a real improvement in their work-life balance and overall quality of life? What have they unexpectedly found they missed?

If possible, it helps to create a separate office space in your living area that can be used for work, thereby separating your work life and home life, allowing for more productivity and less burnout.

Here are a few pros and cons of working at home to consider, whether you work for a single employer, freelance, or run your own small business .

You'll Have Greater Flexibility

Want to take a month off for the whitewater kayaking season in Patagonia every year? By working from home, you just might be able to pull it off, either by working more hours the rest of the year or by working remotely from your holiday spot.

On a less ambitious scale, working at home allows you to adjust your schedule from day to day, taking a three-hour lunch and then making up the hours at night if you want to.

Of course, many appreciate the flexibility for more practical reasons: to provide childcare or eldercare or simply to be at home when the plumber shows up.

You'll Save Money

Commuting costs go away. Your professional wardrobe goes seriously downscale. Whether you're a business owner or an employee, there are incidental costs to showing up at work five days a week that disappear when you stay home.

You May Be More Productive

Are you an introvert who finds social interactions more draining than energy-giving? Then you might thrive in a work environment without other colleagues. If you feel more focused in a quiet environment with few distractions, working from home may give you the opportunity to be your most productive.

Working from home led to more people exercising due to more time available by not commuting, improving physical and mental health.

Your Commute Time Is Zero

In some cities and job sectors, more than two-thirds of workers say they would switch jobs if the change would ease the burden of their commutes. Think about what zero commuting hours a week would do for you.

It Is Isolating

You could be surprised by how much you miss the workplace camaraderie, not to mention the interpersonal drama, the office politics, and the ill-advised romances. And don’t discount the benefits of professional collaboration and social bonds forged in the workplace. They often lead to future opportunities.

Staying Motivated Isn't Easy

Are you an extrovert who thrives on collaborating with others on projects? Do you get energy and inspiration from the kind of impromptu socializing that occurs among colleagues? If so, the solitary nature of working from home might drain rather than augment your energy. It's all too easy to take a break that lasts for hours.

Working at home requires you to motivate yourself.

There Are Distractions

Your home circumstances might have built-in distractions. These might include family members or roommates around the house. They might be tasks that you think you have time for now that you're not going into the office. In any case, if you can't set aside time to devote to work and only work, you can't pull this off.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Working From Home?

The pros of working from home are no commute, more time available to sleep and rest, money saved by not commuting or buying lunch when at the office, greater flexibility, more independence, and no office distractions. The cons of working from home are isolation and loneliness, lack of motivation, at-home distractions, and unmonitored performance.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Working From Home From a Company’s Perspective?

From a company's perspective, the pros of having employees work from home include increased employee satisfaction, which leads to higher employee retention, the ability to hire from a larger pool of talent as opposed to the physical location of the office, increased employee productivity, and lower costs, in regards to rent, operations, and equipment. Some of the cons for employers include lack of team building, lack of team innovation, challenges with communication, and the inability to gauge performance in person.

What Are Some of the Best Work-From-Home Jobs?

Some of the best jobs to work from home include web developer, therapist, teacher, financial analyst, interpreter, computer specialist, writer, editor, social media professional, graphic designer, and computer engineer.

Though working from home comes with many benefits, such as more time, less stress, and more money, the negatives of isolation, at-home distractions, and motivating yourself can make heading to the office seem appealing. In general, employees have found that a mix of working from home and the office is a good solution.

Global Workplace Analytics. " Latest Work-at-Home/Telecommuting/Mobile Work/Remote Work Statistics ."

Bloom, Nicholas and et al. " Does Working from Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment ." The Quarterly Journal of Economics , vol. 130, no. 1, February 2015, pp. 9. Download PDF.

Owl Labs. " State of Remote Work 2021 ," Page 24.

Airtasker. " The Benefits of Working From Home ."

BusinessWire. " Prodoscore Research from March/April 2020: Productivity Has Increased, Led By Remote Workers ."

Mass Biotechnology Council. " MassBio’s 2019 Transportation Survey Finds 60% of Respondents Would Change Jobs for a Better Commute ."

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The Realities of Remote Work

Laura Amico

Work-life boundaries are blurring and managers worry about productivity. What can be done?

The Covid-19 pandemic sparked what economist Nicholas Bloom calls the “ working-from-home economy .” While some workers may have had flexibility to work remotely before the pandemic, this unprecedented shift to remote work looks like it could be here to stay in some form.

Laura Amico is a former senior editor at Harvard Business Review.

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Before jumping into something new, we often weigh the pros and cons. During the pandemic, many workers were forced to work from home and, unfortunately, didn’t get this luxury. But since then, the dust has settled, and many are considering making working from home (WFH) their primary way of working. If you are one of these workers, you're likely in the process of evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of this work style and what it does for you.

It's often helpful to hear from people with prior experience who have seen the benefits and challenges of working from home firsthand (outside of ourselves). To help, we reached out to the work-from-home, remote work, and digital nomad communities to get their perspectives on remote work and WFH. Plus, we included tips for combatting the most common challenges of working from home.

Pros and cons of working from home

Pro: remote workers feel less stressed, con: working from home can be lonely, pro: no daily commute, con: communication + collaboration can be a challenge, pro: remote workers have flexibility in their schedules, con: it's challenging to build a remote company culture.

In 2023, remote workers reported being less stressed than their in-office and hybrid counterparts . This could be due to a number of factors, such as no commute time, less overall spending of money, more time to focus, etc. In fact, hybrid workers - who have the option to work both in-office and from home - say that working from home is best for tasks like working independently, focusing, thinking creatively, and balancing work and life.

That being said, some workers thrive in a typical office environment. If you're new to WFH and struggling to focus, we have some productivity tips and music playlists to help you focus .

Pros: less stress, greater ability to do focused work, being there for my family, more time for pretty much everything that matters (fitness, creative pursuits) Cons: have to be far more intentional re: social engagement. It's easy to put systems in place to deal with other cons — Scott Dawson (@scottpdawson) January 7, 2020

When you work from home, you're likely flying solo most of the time - this may be why 20% of managers say their top workplace concern is employee loneliness . Being alone can create feelings of isolation and loneliness and can often hurt your health and productivity. It's important to build in time for social interaction, even if it isn't in-person.

To combat these feelings, schedule a virtual coffee with a coworker or join a Slack community to socialize with other people who share similar interests as you. If you need even more inspiration, check out these tips to combat the work-from-home loneliness you might be feeling.

If you work in a city, you've likely experienced the hassle of commuting. Whether you're taking public transportation or stuck in traffic, your mind might wander and think about all the other things you could be doing during your commute time. Studies have shown that commuting negatively impacts health and happiness - and in 2023, 33% of workers reported commuting 31-45 minutes (one way) every day . When you work from home, not only will you have more free time in your day, you're likely to see an improvement in your well-being too.

Pros, loca tion freedom, no commute, time to spend with my people, in community, enjoying hobbies. Personal experience, better Comms, more intentional focus on trust. Cons, isolation, career progression, stigma from those who don't understand remote "but do you really work?!" 🙈 — Rose Barrett 🌹🍀 (@RemoteRose) January 7, 2020

Effective communication and collaboration can be hard to achieve when you and your colleagues are distributed across different locations. This means that the tools and strategies you use to communicate need to be thought out and intentional.

Determine which asynchronous communication tools you'll use (e.g., Slack and email) and make sure you have a consistent schedule for face-to-face conversations via video conferencing . When everyone's clear on the methods of collaboration, miscommunication will become less frequent.

Synchronous tools are also important. If you are working from home, you will likely have telecommuting calls with others in the office. In-office employees need to ensure they have the right hardware in place to have collaborative discussions. Consider tools like a 360-camera to capture everyone in the room , along with a dedicated whiteboard camera for brainstorming sessions.

Love this! Landing a consistent style of collaboration and actively promoting inclusion are areas companies need to explore for a positive experience for remote workers. These are key challenges for “hybrid” companies (HQ-based office workers, periodic wfh, and compete remote). — Julie Carey (@jcarey2424) January 7, 2020

Raise your hand if you have responsibilities and obligations outside of your day-to-day job. I'm sure most (if not all) of us have our hands up. Depending on your organization's remote or hybrid work policy , you can schedule your day to accommodate aspects of your life outside of work.

Need to run to a doctor's appointment in the morning? Go for it! Have to hop offline for an hour to pick up your child from school? No problem! Remote work gives you the flexibility to manage all aspects of your life, whether they're directly related to your work or not.

My parents are in their 80's. I can travel to their home, spend time with them (and clean out the refrigerator) while working. The only con is they don't believe I'm working 😂 — Kitt Miller (@netbaby1997) January 9, 2020

If you have a remote team, there are certainly advantages and disadvantages of employees WFH. For one, company culture needs to be more intentional. The ways remote teams get to know one another and collaborate are different than they'd be if everyone worked together in the same office. Luckily, there are remote culture tools and resources that can be used when team members aren't able to get together in-person. Remote leaders and managers need to remember that transparency is key for employees to have the information they need to work independently and feel engaged with their work.

We love our remote workers! Pros: -Communication is more purposeful -Flexibility of time encourages diverse hires Cons (unless you're @GAPartners ): -Losing out on company culture -Collaboration can be a challenge #remoteworkers #digitalnomads #wfh — G&A Partners (@GAPartners) January 8, 2020

With most of the working world experiencing remote work during the pandemic, it is no surprise that many want to WFH full-time. If employers are to take away anything from our 2023 State of Hybrid Work Report , it’s that flexibility reigns supreme. If companies offer their employees the flexibility to work from home or the office - or a combination of both! - workers will be happier and more willing to go the extra mile. That said, it’s important to set employees up for success when they work remotely.

If you’re trying to make the transition to remote work, check out our tips for asking your manager .

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Model Answer

Office has no longer been the only work place since many people are considering working from home. Some may argue the majority of employees should change their work place from office to home. In my opinion, the benefits of working from home can surely surpass the drawbacks due to the following reasons:

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice jam and pollutants to our environment. Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest. These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

There are still some disadvantages that home-working could bring. For instance, working from personal space will reduce direct interactions among colleagues. But the problem is solved thanks to the Internet. As for now, people from around the globe can easily contact and work with others from distances. Another drawback is that some people may get distracted from work by external factors. This requires employees to be highly awared of what they should and should not do for their paid jobs.

In conclusion, working from home should be encouraged because the advantages overcome the disadvantages.

(Written by Chloe Đặng)

Corrected essay

The first sentence is not accurate. It implies that people did not work from home in the past; however, throughout history, many people did work from home, for example, the classical novelists and artists.
“ Can surely ” is an informal expression and does not contribute anything to the preciseness of your writing.
The correct verb to follow the word “benefit” is not “ to surpass ”, but rather “to offset”, “to outweigh”, or “to exceed” .
Do not end your sentence with a colon ( “:” ), unless you want to provide a list of items immediately after that.

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice traffic jam congestion and pollutants to our environment environmental pollution. Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses stress since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest with a flexible working schedule . These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

Words like “comfortable”, or “convenient” are too generic to use in an IELTS writing context. Generally, it’s better to use other words.
Lengthy phrases like “a great deal of time and money” (7 words) are considered as informal and ambiguous. Try to use shorter expressions, for example “time-saving and cost-efficient” (3 words only).
In a formal context, “ traffic congestion ” is more preferrable than “ traffic jam ”. When being alone, the word “ jam ” can be understood as a type of food. It’s always better to use a word that only has one meaning, regardless of the context.
The third sentence in this body paragraph is an example of poor cohesion. “ Traffic jam ” is not parallel to “ pollutants to our environment ”. “ Traffic jam ” is a condition (abstract), not a physical material (touchable by human) like “ pollutants ”. Therefore, you need to use another condition that is parallel to “ traffic jam ” (“ environmental pollution ”)
The fourth sentence (“ Besides, working at… ”) should be placed in the second body paragraph. The author is tailoring his ideas by providing the advantages of working from home in the first body paragraph, then listing the disadvantages in the second body paragraph while attacking those disadvantages notion at the same time. This kind of idea (“ to play the devil’s advocate ”) is good, but the execution isn’t. Insufficient coherence like this will hamper your score in Coherence & Cohesion criterion.
“Stress” as in “psychological stress” is an uncountable noun.
Try to improve the conciseness of your essay by rewritting a sentence clause (S+V) into a noun phrase. For example, “ since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest ” can be shorten into “ with a flexible working schedule ”.
The last sentence is redundant and ungrammatical.

To be fair, There are still some disadvantages that home-working could bring of teleworking . For instance, working from personal space will reduce direct face-to-face interactions among colleagues. But However, the problem is solved thanks to the Internet. As for now, people from around the globe can easily contact and work with others from distances. Another drawback is that some people may get distracted from work by external factors. This situation requires employees to be highly awared awarded of what they should and should not do for their paid jobs.

The accurate way to describe the act of working from home is not “ home-working ”, but rather “ teleworking ” or “ telecommuting ”. The author has miss his chance to improve the Lexical Resource score.
Generally, in a writing context, do not start your sentence with a short subordinate conjuction (“and”, “or”, “but”, “for” ).
The third sentence in this paragraph is very unclear, especially when the followed sentence does not provide a good explanation. The author has to elaborate more on the Internet’s merits (social softwares such as “instant messaging”, “collaborative software” , etc)
The author has failed to provide a counter-argument for the notion of “ people may get distracted from work by external factors ”. Not to mentions he does not elaborate what is the “ external factors ”. Again, weak cohesion.
Do not simply stating “ this ” as a sentence subject. This type of grammatical mistake is called “unclear antecedent”, or “unclear aphoric noun”, and should be avoid by extending the subject with a word like “condition”, “situation”, “issue” , etc.
The conclusion is coherent with the introduction and the two body paragraphs. Though, it is a little bit too short.

(Words: 261)

Overall: 6.0

Task Response: 6

✓ addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others (the author has written more than 250 words and addressed the topic question)

✓ presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive

✓ presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed/unclear

Coherence and Cohesion: 6

✓ arranges information and ideas coherently and there is a clear overall progression (the ideas in each paragraphs are coherent with eachother)

✓ uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical

✓ may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately (the author usually fails at providing good supporting evidence for his argument)

✓ uses paragraphing, but not always logically (the fourth sentence in Body Paragraph 1 should be placed in Body 2 instead)

Lexical Resource: 5

✓ uses a limited range of vocabulary, but this is minimally adequate for the task (all the vocab used in this essay are very generic) ✓ may make noticeable errors in spelling and/or word formation that may cause some difficulty for the reader

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 6

✓ uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms

✓ makes some errors in grammar and punctuation but they rarely reduce communication

———————————————————-

This essay is corrected by Anh Tran

corrected essay
writing-correction

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Why Working From Home Is Better Essay

To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Working from home, a worker is at a greater advantage with several benefits than those who work in the office. Employees working remotely have less stress because they do not have to commute daily to work. Besides, working from home guarantees better work-life balance since workers are more flexible in deciding when to open and close their work. In addition, workers operating remotely save more finance and spend less. Overall, employees working from home are likely to be more productive and experience higher growth than those performing their duties directly from the office.

During the COVID-19 period, individuals were forced to work from home following the global lockdown undertaken by most governments as a measure to mitigate the spread of the deadly virus. Despite the restriction, the approach proved essential since many staff found it easier and more convenient to work remotely as opposed to the workplace. Besides, workers recorded a higher productivity rate compared to the periods when they worked in the offices (Ozkan et al. 3). During the short period and the subsequent adoption by most organizations, it demonstrated that numerous hidden advantages characterize working from home and that most people benefited greatly from the measure (Parker et al. 12). While there could be some disadvantages of remote working, recent experience showed that people benefited and enjoyed working from their homes and would still prefer working remotely even after the end of the pandemic.

Benefits of Working Remotely

Saves money.

Additionally, employees working from home save more money and spend less than their colleagues going to the offices. When performing duties at home, a worker is spared unnecessary expenses such as transportation costs. Whether one uses public or private means, the daily movement cost to the workplace is always exorbitant. These costs translate to money (Purwanto et al. 6238). Remote working, therefore, comes with the relief of not incurring the daily transport cost and the related costs of traveling (Wolfer and Sondra). The money meant for transport costs can be channeled to other development projects for personal growth or saved for other things.

Besides the transport cost, individuals going to the workplace incur other expenses, such as refreshments during lunchtime, since not all organizations provide meals for their staff. For enterprises that do not offer food, workers are forced to purchase the meals on their own leading to more expenditure. Even for the businesses which provide mealtimes for their employees, the foodstuffs are never sufficient and often supplemented by other items bought with money from personal accounts (Ojala and Satu 78). Professional wardrobes are additional costs that characterize the workplace since many office jobs require cabinets. Therefore, remote working facilitates money saving by avoiding such expenses.

Improved mental health

Workers working remotely have proven to enjoy better mental health compared to their counterparts working in offices. This is attributed to the peace and relaxation they have at home because they are alone with no manager to bother and quarrel with them. In addition, employees working from home enjoy better mental health because they can have enough sleep, a thing denied by staff in offices (Wolfer). Remote work allows a worker to close work at a convenience and have enough rest.

Facilitates Flexibility and Work Balance

Additionally, employees working from home enjoy more flexibility than those in offices because they can have a personal schedule to balance both official and domestic work. Workers have various errands which they must perform, and at the same time, they are obligated to perform official duties designated by their employees. At the workplace, the staff is confined to one area and a typical work schedule, which makes it challenging to balance both responsibilities. However, remote working provides suppleness as one can set their timetables, which allows them to balance both duties (Ipsen et al. 2). Since an individual is able to organize private plans, they can end their day as they choose and resort to other domestic duties. Similarly, a colleague working remotely can multitask and achieve success domestically and at their respective organizations (Oskarsson et al. 39). For example, staff can suspend their official duties for a while and do laundry work or kitchen work and resume later, a privilege that cannot be obtained while going to the formal workplace.

Working from home is also flexible in the context of providing enough family time. Often, employees who visit the workplace in the morning and return in the evening need more time to spend with family members, leading to a family gap (Oskarsson et al. 40). Family bonds are strengthened by physical presence; be it a parent-kid bond or couple bond, the partners must at least spend some time together (Purwanto et al. 6239). This, however, is different with many families whose members do not work remotely because they spend most of their time in their workplaces and the remaining time sleeping due to exhaustion. After spending time in the workplace and traveling back home, it is evident that one gets tired and takes a nap (Galanti et al. 2). The ripple effect is then felt in the family, which will be the continued absence of the member. A father, for instance, will be considered absent by his kids and even his wife. Such mysteries are therefore prevented by working from home, which provides the needed flexibility and time for family members. Individuals working remotely have enough time with their family members and are always available whenever needed.

Provides Comfort

Furthermore, working from home grants employees some sort of comfort following limited supervision. While performing duties remotely, a worker is comfortable because they are free to do anything at any time and can choose any position for their workstation. Whether under a tree shade, in the bedroom, or wherever, an employee working from home is of their own volition to choose and can relocate the workstation whenever necessary (Wolfer & Sondra 2). Moreover, employees working from home enjoy the comfort of serenity and peace that the home environment provides. At the offices, a worker is likely to engage in brawls with colleagues or managers, something which is avoidable while working remotely. And since they work in comfort, employees are more productive while working from home. Besides, the comfort also gives workers at home a greater chance of personal growth and numerous opportunities.

Less Commuter Stress

Lastly, daily commuting is full of stressors, such as traffic jams and rude travelers. While this is not an everyday occurrence, on bad days, the workers will likely experience long traffic jams or face rude travelers who do not care about their feelings. Such experiences are dull and affect one’s productivity (Oskarsson et al. 40). Remote working, therefore, saves employees from facing such experiences and ensures they remain in high spirits for their respective duties. At home, a colleague will not meet a rude traveler or be held in a long traffic jam which will lower their productivity.

While it is not perfect due to minor challenges like lack of concentration due to possible distractions from family members, especially kids, which might lower one’s efficiency and effectiveness, such challenges can be easily avoided by setting up a home office far from the children’s reach. Another minor challenge that might be attributed to working from home is the lack of creativity and innovation since staff does not share ideas. However, that can be sorted by telephone consultation and engagement among colleagues (Ozkan et al. 2). After all, employees normally have communication outside of the workplace; thus, such information can be used for the same. Some may also argue that working remotely is difficult to supervise, but that is not a problem, provided a worker understands what is required of them. Some employees work well under minimum supervision, as they should. Despite these challenges, working from home remains the better option for many individuals owing to the comfort and tranquility it provides.

Despite the end of the Corona pandemic, workers in America and other countries would still prefer to work from home than work in the offices because it offers flexibility for easier work-life balance. In addition, working from home provides comfort and tranquility facilitated by the home environment. Furthermore, individuals working from home are spared of the commuter stressors like traffic jams that accompany staff going to the workplace daily. Lastly, working from home is economical as it helps employees to save money by avoiding unnecessary expenses like transport costs.

Works Cited

Galanti, Teresa, et al. Work from Home during the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Impact on Employees’ Remote Work Productivity, Engagement, and Stress .” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, vol. 63, no. 7, 2021, p. e426, Web.

Ipsen, Christine, et al. “ Six Key Advantages and Disadvantages of Working from Home in Europe during COVID-19 .” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, vol. 18, no. 4, 2021, p. 1826, Web.

Ojala, Satu. “ Supplemental Work at Home among Finnish Wage Earners: Involuntary Overtime or Taking advantage of Flexibility? ” Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies , vol. 1, no. 2, 2011, pp. 77-97, Web.

Oskarsson, Emma, et al. “Work-Life Balance among Newly Employed Officers – A Qualitative Study.” Health Psychology Report , vol. 9, no. 1, 2021, pp. 39-48.

Ozkan, Necmettin, Oya Erdil, and Mehmet Şahin Gök. “ Agile Teams Working from Home During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Literature Review on New Advantages and Challenges .” International Conference on Lean and Agile Software Development . Springer, Cham, 2022, Web.

Parker, Kim, et al. “How the Coronavirus Outbreak Has – and Hasn’t – Changed the Way Americans Work.” Pew Research Center , 2020, pp. 1-31.

Purwanto, Agus, et al. “ Impact of Work from Home (WFH) on Indonesian Teachers’ Performance during the Covid-19 Pandemic: An Exploratory Study .” International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology, vol. 29, no. 5, 2020, pp. 6235-6244, Web.

Wolfer, Sondra. “ 9 Best Benefits of Working from Home (and 5 Potential Drawbacks) .” The Muse, Web.

The Problem of Non-Compliance With Traffic Rules
Bottlenecks in a process
The Concept of Remote and Office Working
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Person-Centered Care
E. Durkheim and G. Simmel's Sociological Theories
"The Culture Industry" by Adorno & Horkheimer
Power in Lukes', Gaventa's, and Mouffe's Views
Today's Kant and Modern State of Three Cultures
Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, December 9). Why Working From Home Is Better. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/

"Why Working From Home Is Better." IvyPanda , 9 Dec. 2023, ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

IvyPanda . (2023) 'Why Working From Home Is Better'. 9 December.

IvyPanda . 2023. "Why Working From Home Is Better." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

1. IvyPanda . "Why Working From Home Is Better." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Why Working From Home Is Better." December 9, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/why-working-from-home-is-better/.

Working from home (Corrected Essay)

Some say that it would be better if the majority of employees worked from home instead of traveling to a workplace every day. Do you think the advantages of working from home outweigh the disadvantages?

The first sentence is not accurate. It implies that people did not work from home in the past; however, throughout history, many people did work from home, for example, the classical novelists and artists.

“ Can surely ” is an informal expression and does not contribute anything to the preciseness of your writing.

The correct verb to follow the word “benefit” is not “ to surpass ”, but rather “ to offset ”, “ to outweigh ”, or “ to exceed ”.

Do not end your sentence with a colon ( “:” ), unless you want to provide a list of items immediately after that.

Working from home is a lot more comfortable for lots of people. Employees can save a great deal of time and money since they do not have to travel so often, which means people will have more time for work and for themselves, too. Less travelling will also help reduce traffice traffic jam congestion and pollutants to our environment environmental pollution . Besides, working at home does not mean staying inside all day long, people can choose to work in their garden or backyard, wherever makes them feel convenient to work. Moreover, employees are under less stresses stress since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest with a flexible working schedule . These things will help giving out better perfomance to tasks.

Words like “comfortable”, or “convenient” are too generic to use in an IELTS writing context. Generally, it’s better to use other words.

Lengthy phrases like “a great deal of time and money” (7 words) are considered as informal and ambiguous. Try to use shorter expressions, for example “time-saving and cost-efficient” (3 words only).

In a formal context, “ traffic congestion ” is more preferrable than “ traffic jam ”. When being alone, the word “ jam ” can be understood as a type of food. It’s always better to use a word that only has one meaning, regardless of the context.

The third sentence in this body paragraph is an example of poor cohesion. “ Traffic jam ” is not parallel to “ pollutants to our environment ”. “ Traffic jam ” is a condition (abstract), not a physical material (touchable by human) like “ pollutants ”. Therefore, you need to use another condition that is parallel to “ traffic jam ” (“ environmental pollution ”)

The fourth sentence (“ Besides, working at… ”) should be placed in the second body paragraph. The author is tailoring his ideas by providing the advantages of working from home in the first body paragraph, then listing the disadvantages in the second body paragraph while attacking those disadvantages notion at the same time. This kind of idea (“ to play the devil’s advocate ”) is good, but the execution isn’t. Insufficient coherence like this will hamper your score in Coherence & Cohesion criterion.

“Stress” as in “psychological stress” is an uncountable noun.

Try to improve the conciseness of your essay by rewritting a sentence clause (S+V) into a noun phrase. For example, “ since they get to decide when to work and when to take rest ” can be shorten into “ with a flexible working schedule ”.

The last sentence is redundant and ungrammatical.

The accurate way to describe the act of working from home is not “ home-working ”, but rather “ teleworking ” or “ telecommuting ”. The author has miss his chance to improve the Lexical Resource score.

Generally, in a writing context, do not start your sentence with a short subordinate conjuction (“ and ”, “ or ”, “ but ”, “ for ”).

The third sentence in this paragraph is very unclear, especially when the followed sentence does not provide a good explanation. The author has to elaborate more on the Internet’s merits (social softwares such as “ instant messaging ”, “ collaborative software ”, etc)

The author has failed to provide a counter-argument for the notion of “ people may get distracted from work by external factors ”. Not to mentions he does not elaborate what is the “ external factors ”. Again, weak cohesion.

Do not simply stating “ this ” as a sentence subject. This type of grammatical mistake is called “unclear antecedent”, or “unclear aphoric noun”, and should be avoid by extending the subject with a word like “ condition ”, “ situation ”, “ issue ”, etc.

In conclusion, working from home should be encouraged because the advantages overcome the disadvantages.

The conclusion is coherent with the introduction and the two body paragraphs. Though, it is a little bit too short.

(Words: 261)

Overall: 6.0

Task Response: 6

✓ addresses all parts of the task although some parts may be more fully covered than others (the author has written more than 250 words and addressed the topic question)

✓ presents a relevant position although the conclusions may become unclear or repetitive

✓ presents relevant main ideas but some may be inadequately developed/unclear

Coherence and Cohesion: 6

✓ arranges information and ideas coherently and there is a clear overall progression (the ideas in each paragraphs are coherent with eachother)

✓ uses cohesive devices effectively, but cohesion within and/or between sentences may be faulty or mechanical

✓ may not always use referencing clearly or appropriately (the author usually fails at providing good supporting evidence for his argument)

✓ uses paragraphing, but not always logically (the fourth sentence in Body Paragraph 1 should be placed in Body 2 instead)

Lexical Resource: 5

Grammatical Range and Accuracy: 6

✓ uses a mix of simple and complex sentence forms

✓ makes some errors in grammar and punctuation but they rarely reduce communication

----------------------------------------------------------

This essay is corrected by Anh Tran - Let's Write Something Group .

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Essay on Work From Home

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100 Words Essay on Work From Home

Introduction.

Work from home is a flexible work arrangement where employees perform their job duties from their homes. It’s also known as telecommuting or remote work.

Working from home has several benefits. It saves commuting time, provides a comfortable work environment, and offers flexibility.

However, it also has challenges like distractions, lack of social interaction, and difficulty in separating work and personal life.

Despite the challenges, work from home is becoming increasingly popular due to advancements in technology and the need for flexible work arrangements.

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10 Lines on Work From Home

250 Words Essay on Work From Home

The concept of ‘Work From Home’ (WFH) has gained significant momentum in the wake of the digital revolution and more recently, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It involves performing job duties from home or a location other than a traditional office setup, leveraging technology to stay connected.

Advantages of WFH

WFH offers numerous advantages. Firstly, it eliminates commuting, saving time and reducing carbon footprints. Secondly, it offers a flexible schedule, allowing individuals to balance work and personal life more effectively. Thirdly, it can lead to increased productivity as employees work in their comfort zones, free from office distractions.

Challenges of WFH

However, WFH is not without its challenges. The lack of physical interaction can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness. It also blurs the line between personal and professional life, potentially leading to burnout. Additionally, it requires self-discipline and time management skills, which not everyone may possess.

The Future of WFH

The future of WFH is promising. Companies are realizing that remote work does not compromise productivity and can, in fact, reduce operational costs. However, to make WFH truly effective, organizations need to invest in digital tools and foster a culture of trust and accountability.

In conclusion, WFH is a significant trend shaping the future of work. It offers numerous benefits but also poses unique challenges. As the world continues to navigate the digital age, it is imperative to understand and adapt to this new work paradigm.

500 Words Essay on Work From Home

Introduction to work from home.

The concept of Work From Home (WFH) has been a significant paradigm shift in the modern corporate world. It is a flexible working arrangement that allows employees to perform their tasks from their homes, leveraging technology and digital platforms. This essay delves into the intricacies of WFH, its advantages, drawbacks, and the future implications.

Advantages of Work From Home

WFH offers numerous benefits to both employees and employers. For employees, it eliminates the need for commuting, saving time and reducing stress. It provides a more flexible schedule, allowing individuals to balance their professional and personal lives more effectively. This flexibility often results in increased productivity, as employees can work during their peak energy times.

For employers, WFH can lead to cost savings in terms of reduced office space and utility bills. It also widens the talent pool as geographical restrictions are no longer a barrier in hiring. Furthermore, with the reduction in commuting, it contributes to environmental sustainability by reducing carbon emissions.

Drawbacks of Work From Home

Despite its advantages, WFH is not without its challenges. A significant issue is the blurring of boundaries between work and personal life, leading to the risk of overworking. The lack of face-to-face interaction can also result in feelings of isolation and may impact team cohesion and communication.

For employers, managing a remote workforce can be challenging. It requires robust technology infrastructure, effective communication tools, and new management styles. There are also concerns about data security and maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information.

The Future of Work From Home

The future of WFH looks promising, with many companies planning to adopt hybrid models, combining remote and office work. This approach aims to maximize the benefits of both arrangements while minimizing their drawbacks.

However, it also necessitates a rethinking of traditional work models. It requires a shift in organizational culture, with an emphasis on results rather than hours worked. It also demands the development of digital competencies, both for employees and managers.

In conclusion, WFH is a complex phenomenon with multifaceted implications. While it offers numerous benefits, it also presents significant challenges. As we move forward, the key lies in finding a balanced approach that maximizes the advantages of WFH while mitigating its drawbacks. The future of work is likely to be a blend of remote and office-based work, requiring adaptability, resilience, and digital proficiency from all stakeholders.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

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Happy studying!

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Pros and Cons of Working from Home (From Someone Who Is WFH)

By Katie Duncan Updated on May 22, 2024

Prior to 2020, remote work was like a unicorn in the corporate world—rare and almost mythical. If you were lucky enough to snag one day a week to work from home, you were living the dream. Fast forward to today, and remote work has become a standard option for many professionals. Today, 40% of the workforce engages in some form of remote work , and this number is only expected to grow annually.

Working from home has a lot of perks for employees: flexibility, cost savings, and increased productivity associated with working from home have made it an attractive choice for both employers and employees. However, this shift has also brought about challenges such as isolation, distractions, and the struggle to maintain a work-life balance.

To help you fully understand the pros and cons, who better to turn to than someone with over five years of experience working from home: me— Katie Duncan, the content manager here at JobSage! Typically, my experiences don’t take center stage in JobSage blogs. But with half a decade of WFH in both freelance and full-time positions under my belt, I felt I could offer some first-hand expertise.

Advantages of working from home

Ready to secretly wear your pajama pants all day? Here are some of the benefits that I (and many other WFHers) love about working from home.

1. No commute

Cutting out the dreaded morning and afternoon commute puts valuable time back into your hands to do things that you love.

2. Fewer expenses

Eliminating your daily commute to work saves more than time; it also saves you money that you’d spend on fuel, car maintenance, or public transportation. Additionally, working from home can help you cut costs in other categories like work apparel or lunches at the nearest sandwich shop.

3. Location independence

Location independence is a major benefit to remote work. Whether you have lofty goals to explore national parks and new countries or would simply like to work from a different coffee shop every week, remote work options enable you to do this.

Note: Before you start planning a globe-trekking journey, always be sure to double-check your employer’s remote guidelines. Some workplaces stipulate that you must reside within your state or country due to scheduling or tax implications.

4. Streamlined communication

Tired of days filled with meetings that could have been a few emails? Many people find that when work is flexible and remote, communication is streamlined between coworkers and teams.

Of course, this isn’t the case for all employers. Some companies tend to lean towards over-communication instead of under-communication, leaving employees with daily schedules packed full of Zoom calls. When interviewing for a position, always be sure to ask questions about their communication process. This can give you a better idea of whether or not their process matches up with your ideal vision.

5. Fewer office distractions

Between in-person meetings, conversations with coworkers, and the sounds of phones or equipment, the office can be a distracting place. At quiet home office means you can be productive in an environment that works best for you.

6. Take care of chores and to-dos around the house

Working from home gives you extra time to do those things around the house that ordinarily pile up. Whether it’s a load of laundry before meetings or the chance to do dishes during lunch, taking care of these tasks throughout the day can make housekeeping far more manageable.

7. Increased flexibility

Many companies who offer remote work opportunities also allow some degree of flexible scheduling.

Being able to set the times that you work allows you to do things during the day that you would otherwise have to take off for. Doctor appointments, taking the kids to school and picking them up, and helping family members can all be done throughout the day. This also allows you to adjust your schedule to your most productive hours.

Note : Keep in mind that remote doesn’t automatically mean flexible. Some remote companies still expect their employees to be at their computers from 9 to 5 as they would in-office. This is also something to ask about at some point in the interview process.

8. Opens up more job opportunities

When you are open to working from home, more jobs become available to you. This is because companies from coast to coast are hiring remote employees that live anywhere in the country— not just in the cities they’re based in. More job opportunities mean that you have a better chance of finding a job you truly love with an employer you’re proud to work for.

Disadvantages of working from home

Though there are plenty of reasons why I love working from home, I know it’s not for everyone. The following are a few reasons why some people prefer to stay in the office.

1. Lack of a good working environment

While an office may be distracting for some, the home may be an even poorer work environment for others. Whether it be kids, roommates, or other family members, the home isn’t always quiet and can have plenty of distractions.

2. Home office costs

Working from your bed sounds nice, but your back and neck will thank you for a desk and ergonomic chair. Building a home office like the one you have at work can get a little pricey— and not all employers are willing to help their employees cover these costs. Whether it’s a laptop stand and second monitor or a standing desk, creating the perfect setup isn’t always cheap.

3. Less face-to-face interaction

Working from home can get a little lonely at times, leaving people yearning for face-to-face interaction with coworkers. If in-person communication and camaraderie with coworkers are a must for you, then a remote job may not be the best option.

4. Less work-life balance

Some people find a better work-life balance when working from home; others are worse off. There are days where you feel like you never really leave your job when your office is also your home. With no physical separation between work and home life, the lines can get blurred, leaving you feeling burnt out and exhausted whether you’re on the clock or off.

Don’t be afraid to ask how a company supports work-life balance in an interview!

Weigh your work from home options

A workplace environment that works for one person may not be great for the next. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to weigh the pros and cons of working from home. By considering both the benefits and challenges, you can make an informed decision that best suits your personal and professional needs.

If you’re still on the fence, consider looking for an employer with hybrid work opportunities that can give you the best of both worlds!

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Working from Home

Working From Home Essays

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Flexibility of Working from Home

Many employers are now offering their employees the option to work from home. As a result, employees will have much more flexible working hours in the future. Is this a positive or negative development? It is well known that many employers are offering their employees to work from home. Due to this, workers will have more flexibility and changes in working hours as well as the way of working, in upcoming days. This option is having both pros and cons. Let us discuss the same in the following essay. Firstly, it is widely accepted that working from home will give opportunity to the employees to balance work and life equally. For instance, employees can save travel time and that helps to spend more time with their family. And also, as per the experimental research, maintaining a good work-life balance will positively affects the employee's productivity. Secondly, the work from home option is having the negative side too. Employees without the proper work setup like, internet connection and separate work place, might give low result comparing to office workers. To illustrate this, in office, employee's will be given a good work environment and infrastructure. But, in home, most of the employees will never get those opportunities which will negatively affect the employee's outcome. On the other hand, it will also affect the company's confidentiality, because in home with unsecured internet connection it is very difficult to protect the company's important informations, which is a major threat to the company. In colclusion, in spite of the fact that work from home is having many positive outcomes, it is also having more negative effects in terms of unfavorable work environment, facilities and security threats. The disadvantages are outweigh the advantages so, I am convinced that working in office is the best way than operation from home.

Working and Studying From Home Essay

by Francesca (VietNam)

Around the world, many adults are working from home, and more children are beginning to study from home because technology has become cheaper and more accessible. Do you think this is a positive or negative development? Can't dispute the fact that in today's world, the International Networking has enabled everyone to a more active environment, and by everyone I mean literally everyone from all works of life, from the young to the elderly. And globally, grownups are starting bring work from the office to home, children are studying from home via diverse online teaching platforms, one particular reason for this is that technology is inexpensive and easy to approach. In my opinion, this is a positive development because working or studying from home save us from a great deal of harassment. On one hand, utilizing the power of technology to create a professional workplace at home, or an effective study environment is the ultimate as It benefits us a lot. Imagine having to wake up at 6am to get ready for work everyday and wasting a ton of time to get to the workplace. With the help of technology, we can just open the devices and start working instantly right at home. This helps saving your time and also teaching you an independent lifestyle, training you to be proactive and disciplined. On the other hand, study or work at home can be struggling. Since we can have access to many things hand in hand with the studying or working time, we can easily lose concentration on what we are supposed to be working on. For example, while studying at home, you will get exhausted sometimes so you want to take a little break and that might leave you sleeping during online class. In conclusion, working or studying from home has both positive and detrimental aspects, but the positive one seems to prevail. That working or studying from home saves not only our energy but also our precious time, moreover, It teaches you to be a disciplined and independent person.

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Working from home advantages and disadvantages essay

November 13, 2021

Due to technologies working from home and remotely is easier than ever. Whether you work as a programmer, writer, customer support, freelancer, blogger, teacher, and consultant you can take advantage of working from home.

But along with the advantages, there are certain disadvantages of working at home. While if you work from home it’s good for employers to reduce the infrastructure cost and increase productivity. And it was very important during the covid-19.

Still, there are various new companies and startups that are more willing to build hybrid (home and office) work environments and cultures. If you’re working at home and bored then you need to be aware of the disadvantages so that you can make certain changes in your schedule and it’s also good for those who want to work from home.

But those working at the office or unaware of the advantages or disadvantages can find this post useful as well.

Advantages of working from home:

1. saves time and money:.

Doing office work at home will save you time. You don’t have to travel. Not you will be late and drive in a hurry! Not you will be stuck in a traffic jam. Nor do you have to participate in crowd quarrels.

All of this will save time and money. This will benefit you financially, mentally, and physically.

For example, if you have to spend 1 hour daily visiting the office and coming back from the office to home, then you can use this time for meditation, exercises, and learning something new that you never learned.

You can use or invest the money that you saved from petrol or taxi services into mutual funds or SIP. And you also contributed to the reduce the pollution.

All of these are the most practical advantages. And those who finish work very late at night can sleep 30 minutes more in the morning.

2. Able to spend time with kids:

Most of us are busy with entrepreneurship and professional life. The expectations of our family and self from us are higher. And taking family responsibility and raising kids is not that easy. Especially when prices are at their highest level. And all of this and professional competition make life like a machine. Everything has a schedule, pre-planned programs, analysis, fixed prices, processes, and patterns of input and output.

Dealing with all is a compulsion and most of the time we make or we’re programmed like that from childhood.

We want to spend time with family, we want to travel, we want to become wealthy, and we want to improve our living standards but most of us are not able to do that or we struggle. And your new struggle is important and essential to growing.

But working from home at least gives you time to play with kids. You can do breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them. And you can also help them to get sleep as well by telling stories.

Not only that, but when your kids will see that you’re working, learning, reading, and communicating they will observe, analyze and understand your work ethics and behaviors.

If you’re good at that they will get inspired. Else they will feel bad working like you.

Even while you’re working, you can make them interested to sit with you and do their homework.

This point is emotional, but what is a better time investment than investing it with kids and your spouse?

We don’t get that much time to spend in the morning and evening with family when we have to travel and work from the office. And due to that, our kids become habitual with mobile phones, social media, and many other bad habits.

And Sunday is not enough when most of us have to take rest or need to give time for relatives and various others such as plumbing, billing, cleaning, and various other weekly home works.

So, working from home have its advantages in that you can spend time with kids as well while working or on small breaks.

3. Impact on mental and physical fitness:

Working from home impacts your health positively. You will get good and proper time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You will eat good homemade food that is healthier than canteen or office food. You will be able to spend time with family and understand their personal and professional goals. You will get a chance to understand them while at lunch or dinner. Not only that you will get a real picture of how things are going at home and with relatives and neighbors.

Else, if you spend most of your time at the office, then you will have less time and attention to listen to your family members. Not only that you can also share your doubts and insecurities with them. It will also make you relaxed.

At home, you can schedule the time for exercise and meditation. And when you do that in front of your kids then they will also get inspired from you. And you will be able to build good habits in your kids.

4. You can help with family work during breaks:

When working you can take a break from work as well. And you can use any time to work on when you are most active. You can change your body posture and sit.

While on breaks, you can help your spouse to make food. You can help with small and domestic work. It will increase the love between you and your spouse. This will create a positive environment and you will become more productive at work. And both of you can help each other.

If you’re single, then you can work at any time. You have to make progress, so you can follow a schedule or work based on your creativity.

For example, if you got the idea at 12 PM to do something, then you can implement that immediately.

5. Healthy work environment:

At the office, you have to sit for long hours in front of computers, lights, ACs, and servers. Most of the things in the office are artificial and consumption of that air, heat, and light is not good.

But at home, you can sit in the garden with natural air and sunlight. You can sit in a dark room for creativity or in natural light when feeling lazy.

You have more options to create and use natural options.

I know that we can’t do all types of work from home. Not all will be comfortable doing it. And it also varies based on the job roles. For example, freelancers have more freedom than regular employees. But employees are more stable financially than a freelancer.

So, everything is based on the choice or interest of people. Everyone has a different experience, interest, and impact.

But along with the advantages of working from home, there are also many disadvantages as well. Let’s take a look at the following disadvantages of working from home:

Disadvantages of working from home:

1. laziness and procrastination:.

If you don’t follow the balanced schedule to work at home then it’s tough to become productive. At home, you have more options to become lazy and procrastinate.

For example, when you know, you don’t have to go office then you will wake up late. Sooner it will become a habit and you will start getting up at 8 AM or 9 AM.

At home, you can be distracted when someone visits at home. For example, when relatives or neighbors know that you’re at home then there are higher chances that they will invite you to parties, travel, and events. If not, they can also come to your home.

And you can’t avoid or ignore them very easily. And it’s tough to become disciplined at work and also in studies at home.

Even if no one comes, at home you will have options for gossip, entertainment and parties, and various other luxury comforts.

So, whenever you will face little difficulty in the work you will be easily attracted by those comfortable or enjoyable options. And it will reduce your productivity and focus. It’s also because at home no one is watching you what you’re doing along with work or how you’re doing the work.

At home, you can eat more or more frequently. This will increase your weight. And it will negatively impact your work and health.

Discover: Time management techniques at the workplace for higher productivity

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2. You will learn less and your career growth will be slow:

I know that you can learn at home and build skills online in your spare time. You might not get that time in the office. But it’s not the same case for all.

Related: How to learn any type of IT skills online

When you’re in the office you have more chances to communicate and discuss the project ideas. At the office, you have a proper meeting time and room. Where you will not get distracted.

When you work at the office, you communicate with your coworkers and team members on a personal level as well. You will become more aware of what’s happening or what they are up to.

All of these office activities have more chances for networking and learning.

But at home, you will not find someone to share ideas. Else you can discuss it with your family. But that won’t work all the time.

I don’t mean you can’t learn at home. I mean along with learning you also need awareness and discussion on your lessons.

If you learned something then you have to test that before you finally select that idea. So, communication and networking, and meeting with people are more important for learning. If you can do that at home and online then it’s great, else do that online but also build connections with real-world people as well, especially those who are building virtual worlds.

Explore: Productive things to do on the Internet for Career and Business growth

3. Loneliness and lack of motivation for work:

If you are single then working from home is more challenging for you. Even for married people as well.

In the beginning, when you start working at home you will be more interested. You will enjoy working at home. But sooner or within a few months, you will start getting bored. It’s because there is no one working with you. Even chatting or video calling is not enough. All of them are outside.

While many manage their work and time effectively. Such as after working for 3 hours they visit a coffee shop or take a walk with the dog.

There are various famous and successful people in history who worked from home or started working from home.

But for that, you need focus, passion, and self-discipline. Not all are able to get that especially when they failed.

So, it’s important to consider your personality and productivity style. At home, you have to guide and order yourself. But at office, your seniors or boss or team leader or company is monitoring you. So, whether you’re motivated or not you have to work.

But it’s also possible in remote works as well. That your work is monitored or you have to respond to people. Even most of the people working for clients and companies as a freelancer or employees are monitored and managed well. But working for years just from home and alone is not a suitable or best option.

4. Home is Home, not an office:

The office is a proper and professional space for work. In your profession, job, and business you have to deal and communicate with various types of people. Not all types of deals, people and communications are equal.

So many times, you will be getting distraction while chatting or working with clients or in the meeting. Especially when you’re living in 2 BHK or in a colony. Not only do you get disturbed but your loud communication on the balcony due to a low network signal can disturb others as well.

Else if you have many rooms or separate entrances for one or two rooms then you can use those as an office. But if your work is related to meeting with people then you have to compromise your privacy.

Working from home is more suitable for YouTubers, bloggers, freelancers, and IT-related remote staff. But even these professionals also need to communicate and experience the real world. So that they can communicate better or create more useful content.

Related: How to build a learning environment for your kids at home

5. Lack of creativity:

If you’re a creative person or professional then it’s important for you to experience new things, people, sceneries, events, and learnings. At home, if you can’t change or make the work environment flexible, creative, and interesting then it’s tough to come up with new ideas and excitement.

6. The market and network will forget you:

Never become out of reach from your customers. In today’s time, there is more than one seller of the same goods and services. That’s why if not you then someone else is right. Common people do not know this or your customers and clients will only understand that you are working from home because your business is ruined. That’s why they will not contact such a person.

Apart from this, customers go to the market to buy, not at home. This means that those who are your customers or clients, when you’re not in their reach then they will not even notice you, and they will get their work done by someone else. People’s memory is getting weak, they don’t remember that you are also an expert. Now they will start counting you among them.

That’s why working from home or living at home means being excluded from social networking and professional networks. And the one who is not in the network does not get calls.

So if you want to build and grow your network in the market you must keep yourself connected to and visible to your target customers. that can be online and offline. But your customer should know that you’re still alive and working.

Our professional and social networks play a big role in our business and career success. Do not ignore this especially if you’re earning money based on your talents.

Conclusion:

Whether you work from home or office the most important thing is your focus and mindset. But it is also important to choose a workplace based on the type of work and goals.

If you’re doing a job in an IT company or working as an IT professional and you think can work from home then it’s great. Do that.

But when getting bored or when you think you can’t work anymore alone then change that.

There are lots of things that we have to do each day. Many times we fail and are successful. But in failures, we question or reason it our workplace or work environment.

Yes, a good work environment and good people in the network are really important for professional growth. But if you think you can do it online or at home then do it.

If you think you can do it at the office then do that.

Don’t worry, about the rent or the cost of the office when you know you can cover it with your work.

You have to give more preferences to your work and professional goals. Rather than thinking do I work at home or at the office?

And also remember, closing a business or closing an office and only working from home looks good in the beginning, but later or after a year or two you will experience the importance of a proper office and physical work environment.

Personally, I work in both places at the office and also at home. But I found that when I work at the office, I was more productive. I also found that when I am focused and motivated then I don’t care where I am working. I just work. No matter it’s an office, garden, home, car, or parking place.

And I also found that it’s tough for you and also family members to schedule or follow each other’s time. For example, if you’re currently focused on work, but then someone is calling you for dinner or lunch or you visit then you will be distracted from that focus.

So, I think it’s more a problem of focus than a place. So, whether it’s home or office, you have to build and use the environment that will make you more focused, excited, interested, and motivated to work. Now it can be your home or office.

During covid-19, it was or is very important and productive to work from home. Even after the post covid many companies and businesses are now more focused to work from home. There are also many people who found that working from home was great for them. While many find it very difficult and unproductive to work from home.

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Vijay Sharma

Hi, Welcome to my personal blog, Klient Solutech, where I share insights, strategies, trends, and observations on the dynamic world of Technology, Digital Marketing and Web Development.

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1. Increased Employee Productivity

Escaping the traditional working environment , home-based employees witness a surge in productivity. According to a survey conducted by Erogotron, 40% of 1,000 remote workers worked longer hours than when they were in the office. The National Bureau of Economic Research has estimated that these additional hours could amount to up to 193 per year.

The question is: how can employees boost their performance at home? Compared to the hustle and flurry at an office, remote workers thrive in a quiet and less-distracting work environment. As a result, they can focus on their tasks and deliver higher productivity levels.

2. Work-Life Balance

Studies by Ergtron and Future Forum highlight a key benefit of remote and hybrid work: improved work-life balance. These studies found that a significant portion of remote workers report achieving a better balance between work and personal life.

One of the key advantages of hybrid offices is the flexibility in scheduling, allowing workers to structure their workday around their needs. Consequently, they can juggle multiple tasks effectively, from running errands, attending gym classes, taking children to school, or doing side hustles.

3. Reduced Commute Stress

Navigating through congested traffic during rush hours is truly a nightmare for workers. Statistics from the Auto Insurance Center show that average commuters spend over 100 hours stuck in traffic each year. Not to mention, they may get stuck in traffic jams for about 41 hours annually and longer commute times on busy roads, adding stress and anxiety before the workday even begins.

Additionally, bad traffic conditions and long daily commutes put significant pressure on your physical health, potentially leading to increased blood sugar and high cholesterol.

Working from home eliminates all of those issues, freeing up some time for other healthy habits and supporting workers’ overall well-being.

4. Diverse Inclusivity

Remote work enables businesses to cast a wider net when head-hunting. By eliminating the need for physical offices, companies can attract talents from different geographic locations, cultural backgrounds, and socio-economic statuses without geographical barriers.

Such a tendency fosters cultural diversity within the workforce. Diversity brings together individuals with unique perspectives and experiences, which empowers the company with enhanced innovation. Additionally, remote work empowers employees to maintain a healthy work-life balance, encouraging a sense of belonging within their local communities. It’s a win-win situation for both businesses and employees!

5. Cost Savings

USA Today says American remote workers can save up to $6,000 annually. These savings result from various reduced costs, such as fuel and transportation, car maintenance, office dress code , lunches out, etc.

Businesses also financially benefit from a hybrid or fully remote working environment. According to the US Career Institute , they can cut down nearly $11,000 per year for each employee working remotely. FlexJobs indicates that WFH policies are a major contributor to their long-term cost reductions, saving significantly on real estate expenses, moving allowances, or electricity and water bills.

6. More Job Opportunities

As mentioned above, geographic flexibility creates more work opportunities by eliminating recruitment barriers. In addition, it creates favorable conditions for minority groups. Future Forum reported that Black workers find it easier to handle stress when they work remotely. Women with young children and people with chronic health conditions can also find their places in the remote job market more easily.

7. Positive Environmental Impact

WFH positively impacts the environment thanks to reduced travel-related emissions. By working remotely at least half-time, 3.9 million pre-pandemic employees helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as removing over 600,000 cars from the road in a year.

Furthermore, telecommuters can take better control over eco-friendly practices. For example, you can adjust devices to energy-saving modes and turn off unnecessary lights or air conditioners to optimize energy usage. These simple yet impactful environmental choices have a cumulative effect equivalent to planting 91 million trees.

8. Personalized Workplace

Working from home means you have the freedom to customize your workspace to your preferences. Invest in an ergonomic chair to ensure comfort, or simply turn on your favorite songs at maximum volume; it’s up to you!

This flexibility is particularly beneficial for individuals with specific medical requirements. For example, a person with SAD wants nothing but a desk near a window where they can bask in natural sunlight.

Best of all, you can handle tasks from anywhere you want. A change in the workplace can inspire your creativity and boost your performance. Visit any place you wish to, from a coffee shop to a resort, as long as you stay connected to your work.

9. Healthier Habits & Lifestyle

Remote work life empowers your control over your diet. Instead of high-calorie drinks and snacks, you have time to prepare home-cooked meals. You can also incorporate short bursts of exercise throughout the day.

Unlike in a traditional office where breaks might be limited, you can take regular breaks and participate in physical activities that alleviate tension in your shoulders, neck, and back.

10. Comfortable Environment

Working from home fosters a sense of belonging, which can contribute to increased job satisfaction and potentially higher productivity. For instance, most workers believe comfortable loungewear, such as pajamas or exercise outfits, keeps them active all day.

Meanwhile, some prefer to work in an oversized chair with their feet resting on the arm. Though such a sitting position is not recommended for prolonged periods, it undeniably helps reduce stress levels. Undoubtedly, your morale at work soars when surrounded by the things you love.

11. Reduced Office Germs

In addition to the significant benefits of a healthier lifestyle, hybrid working prevents the spread of diseases on a large scale. A crowded, confined workplace is the breeding ground for viruses, particularly when someone is sick. Remote work policies’ efficacy in limiting the transmission of diseases has been proven during the COVID-19 pandemic.

12. Increased Job Satisfaction

With numerous great things above, individuals working from home are often associated with higher job satisfaction. As a result, their commitment to the business and employee morale increase. This drives other positive outcomes, such as lower turnover rates, the development of a healthy company culture, and potentially higher revenue generation.

5 Disadvantages To Consider

1. blurred boundaries between work hours and life hours.

Not everyone possesses good time management skills and strict self-discipline to separate their personal lives and normal working hours. NordLayer research has indicated that the average work time of individuals in the US, Canada, and the UK increased by 2 hours when they worked from home.

When you let the workload creep into your leisure time, it wipes out the benefits of remote work. Overworking puts your health at risk, causing many other negative effects.

Hence, it is best to establish clear boundaries for your responsibilities. Try to maintain a consistent routine and create a ritual to call it a day. You should also make a to-do list for the day and turn off your computer when you have ticked off all the boxes.

2. Lack Of Motivation

Some individuals struggle to maintain peak productivity due to a lack of motivation when working independently. For these people, the office dynamics and the presence of colleagues ignite their work spirit.

Plus, some find their career path unclear due to a shrinking professional network. The ambiguity of formal review sessions and promotion opportunities diminishes the drive to strive for new achievements and acquire new skills.

3. Potential Isolation And Bias

Social media organization Buffer has warned about a major downside of working from home: the lack of social interaction. Some people even suffer from bias against those who work full-time in office settings. For example, reporting tasks solely through software may result in a lack of recognition from supervisors for their achievements.

To combat isolation, maintain effective communication within your organization. Make time for face-to-face meetings with fellow office workers to nurture your social relationships. Ultimately, express your concerns if you think you feel alienated or undervalued.

4. Home Temptations

The biggest challenge of working from home is managing distractions in your comfortable space. Unlike in a traditional office environment where supervision helps you stay focused, you may find yourself stuck in household tasks, childcare responsibilities, or personal indulgences.

In my experience, it’s okay to loosen yourself a bit during the workday. For example, you could walk your dog for 20 minutes and commit to returning to work immediately afterward. Taking short breaks to engage in enjoyable activities can help you reduce stress and re-energize for the tasks ahead.

5. Disconnection From Team Dynamic

Working from home means you no longer spend as much time chatting or having lunch with your colleagues, which might take a toll on team cohesion and collaboration.

To overcome this disadvantage, do not hesitate to initiate outings or coffee dates to bridge the gap. When handling work, it is crucial to communicate properly with your team members to minimize unnecessary misunderstandings.

Despite the numerous benefits of remote work, it’s important to be aware of potential challenges that can impact employee well-being and team dynamics . If you want to bring your physical office to your home, discuss it directly with your employer to establish a clear boundary between work and personal life. You should also practice planning your work and commit to the established routine for optimal results.

Christina J. Colclough

Dr Christina J. Colclough is an expert on The Future World of Work and the politics of digital technology advocating globally for the importance of the workers’ voice. She has extensive regional and global labour movement experience, is a sought-after keynote speaker, coach, and strategist advising progressive governments and worker organisations.

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Researchers working from home: Benefits and challenges

Balazs Aczel

1 Institute of Psychology, ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

Marton Kovacs

2 Doctoral School of Psychology, ELTE Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Hungary

Tanja van der Lippe

3 Department of Sociology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Barnabas Szaszi

Associated data.

All research materials, the collected raw and processed anonymous data, just as well the code for data management and statistical analyses are publicly shared on the OSF page of the project: OSF: https://osf.io/v97fy/ .

The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary for most professionals. Whether working from home is the key or impediment to academics’ efficiency and work-life balance became a daunting question for both scientists and their employers. The recent pandemic brought into focus the merits and challenges of working from home on a level of personal experience. Using a convenient sampling, we surveyed 704 academics while working from home and found that the pandemic lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers but around a quarter of them were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on the gathered personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that in the future they would be similarly or more efficient than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data. Taking well-being also into account, 66% of them would find it ideal to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown. These results draw attention to how working from home is becoming a major element of researchers’ life and that we have to learn more about its influencer factors and coping tactics in order to optimize its arrangements.

Introduction

Fleeing from the Great Plague that reached Cambridge in 1665, Newton retreated to his countryside home where he continued working for the next year and a half. During this time, he developed his theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation—fundamentally changing the path of science for centuries. Newton himself described this period as the most productive time of his life [ 1 ]. Is working from home indeed the key to efficiency for scientists also in modern times? A solution for working without disturbance by colleagues and being able to manage a work-life balance? What personal and professional factors influence the relation between productivity and working from home? These are the main questions that the present paper aims to tackle. The Covid-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to analyze the implications of working from home in great detail.

Working away from the traditional office is increasingly an option in today’s world. The phenomenon has been studied under numerous, partially overlapping terms, such as telecommuting, telework, virtual office, remote work, location independent working, home office. In this paper, we will use ‘working from home’ (WFH), a term that typically covers working from any location other than the dedicated area provided by the employer.

The practice of WFH and its effect on job efficiency and well-being are reasonably well explored outside of academia [ 2 , 3 ]. Internet access and the increase of personal IT infrastructure made WFH a growing trend throughout the last decades [ 4 ]. In 2015, over 12% of EU workers [ 5 ] and near one-quarter of US employees [ 6 ] worked at least partly from home. A recent survey conducted among 27,500 millennials and Gen Z-s indicated that their majority would like to work remotely more frequently [ 7 ]. The literature suggests that people working from home need flexibility for different reasons. Home-working is a typical solution for those who need to look after dependent children [ 8 ] but many employees just seek a better work-life balance [ 7 ] and the comfort of an alternative work environment [ 9 ].

Non-academic areas report work-efficiency benefits for WFH but they also show some downsides of this arrangement. A good example is the broad-scale experiment in which call center employees were randomly assigned to work from home or in the office for nine months [ 10 ]. A 13% work performance increase was found in the working from home group. These workers also reported improved work satisfaction. Still, after the experiment, 50% of them preferred to go back to the office mainly because of feeling isolated at home.

Home-working has several straightforward positive aspects, such as not having to commute, easier management of household responsibilities [ 11 ] and family demands [ 12 ], along with increased autonomy over time use [ 13 , 14 ], and fewer interruptions [ 15 , 16 ]. Personal comfort is often listed as an advantage of the home environment [e.g., 15 ], though setting up a home office comes with physical and infrastructural demands [ 17 ]. People working from home consistently report greater job motivation and satisfaction [ 4 , 11 , 18 , 19 ] which is probably due to the greater work-related control and work-life flexibility [ 20 ]. A longitudinal nationally representative sample of 30,000 households in the UK revealed that homeworking is positively related with leisure time satisfaction [ 21 ], suggesting that people working from home can allocate more time for leisure activities.

Often-mentioned negative aspects of WFH include being disconnected from co-workers, experiencing isolation due to the physical and social distance to team members [ 22 , 23 ]. Also, home-working employees reported more difficulties with switching off and they worked beyond their formal working hours [ 4 ]. Working from home is especially difficult for those with small children [ 24 ], but intrusion from other family members, neighbours, and friends were also found to be major challenges of WFH [e.g., 17 ]. Moreover, being away from the office may also create a lack of visibility and increases teleworkers’ fear that being out of sight limits opportunities for promotion, rewards, and positive performance reviews [ 25 ].

Importantly, increased freedom imposes higher demands on workers to control not just the environment, but themselves too. WFH comes with the need to develop work-life boundary control tactics [ 26 ] and to be skilled at self-discipline, self-motivation, and good time management [ 27 ]. Increased flexibility can easily lead to multitasking and work-family role blurring [ 28 ]. Table 1 provides non-comprehensive lists of mostly positive and mostly negative consequences of WFH, based on the literature reviewed here.

Compared to the private sector, our knowledge is scarce about how academics experience working from home. Researchers in higher education institutes work in very similar arrangements. Typically, they are expected to personally attend their workplace, if not for teaching or supervision, then for meetings or to confer with colleagues. In the remaining worktime, they work in their lab or, if allowed, they may choose to do some of their tasks remotely. Along with the benefits on productivity when working from home, academics have already experienced some of its drawbacks at the start of the popularity of personal computers. As Snizek observed in the ‘80s, “(f)aculty who work long hours at home using their microcomputers indicate feelings of isolation and often lament the loss of collegial feedback and reinforcement” [page 622, 29 ].

Until now, the academics whose WFH experience had been given attention were mostly those participating in online distance education [e.g., 30 , 31 ]. They experienced increased autonomy, flexibility in workday schedule, the elimination of unwanted distractions [ 32 ], along with high levels of work productivity and satisfaction [ 33 ], but they also observed inadequate communication and the lack of opportunities for skill development [ 34 ]. The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to study the WFH experience of a greater spectrum of academics, since at one point most of them had to do all their work from home.

We have only fragmented knowledge about the moderators of WFH success. We know that control over time is limited by the domestic tasks one has while working from home. The view that women’s work is more influenced by family obligations than men’s is consistently shown in the literature [e.g., 35 – 37 ]. Sullivan and Lewis [ 38 ] argued that women who work from home are able to fulfil their domestic role better and manage their family duties more to their satisfaction, but that comes at the expense of higher perceived work–family conflict [see also 39 ]. Not surprisingly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, female scientists suffered a greater disruption than men in their academic productivity and time spent on research, most likely due to demands of childcare [ 40 , 41 ].

In summary, until recently, the effect of WFH on academics’ life and productivity received limited attention. However, during the recent pandemic lockdown, scientists, on an unprecedented scale, had to find solutions to continue their research from home. The situation unavoidably brought into focus the merits and challenges of WFH on a level of personal experience. Institutions were compelled to support WFH arrangements by adequate regulations, services, and infrastructure. Some researchers and institutions might have found benefits in the new arrangements and may wish to continue WFH in some form; for others WFH brought disproportionately larger challenges. The present study aims to facilitate the systematic exploration and support of researchers’ efficiency and work-life balance when working from home.

Materials and methods

Our study procedure and analysis plan were preregistered at https://osf.io/jg5bz (all deviations from the plan are listed in S1 File ). The survey included questions on research work efficiency, work-life balance, demographics, professional and personal background information. The study protocol has been approved by the Institutional Review Board from Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary (approval number: 2020/131). The Transparency Report of the study, the complete text of the questionnaire items and the instructions are shared at our OSF repository: https://osf.io/v97fy/ .

As the objective of this study was to gain insight about researchers’ experience of WFH, we aimed to increase the size and diversity of our sample rather than ascertaining the representativeness of our sample. Therefore, we distributed our online survey link among researchers in professional newsletters, university mailing lists, on social media, and by sending group-emails to authors (additional details about sampling are in S1 File ). As a result of the nature of our sampling strategy, it is not known how many researchers have seen our participation request. Additionally, we did not collect the country of residence of the respondents. Responses analyzed in this study were collected between 2020-04-24 and 2020-07-13. Overall, 858 individuals started the survey and 154 were excluded because they did not continue the survey beyond the first question. As a result, 704 respondents were included in the analysis.

We sent the questionnaire individually to each of the respondents through the Qualtrics Mailer service. Written informed consent and access to the preregistration of the research was provided to every respondent before starting the survey. Then, respondents who agreed to participate in the study could fill out the questionnaire. To encourage participation, we offered that upon completion they can enter a lottery to win a 100 USD voucher.

This is a general description of the survey items. The full survey with the display logic and exact phrasing of the items is transported from Qualtrics and uploaded to the projects’ OSF page: https://osf.io/8ze2g/ .

Efficiency of research work

The respondents were asked to compare the efficiency of their research work during the lockdown to their work before the lockdown. They were also asked to use their present and previous experience to indicate whether working more from home in the future would change the efficiency of their research work compared to the time before the lockdown. For both questions, they could choose among three options: “less efficient”; “more efficient”, and “similarly efficient”.

Comparing working from home to working in the office

Participants were asked to compare working from home to working from the office. For this question they could indicate their preference on a 7-point dimension (1: At home; 7: In the office), along 15 efficiency or well-being related aspects of research work (e.g., working on the manuscript, maintaining work-life balance). These aspects were collected in a pilot study conducted with 55 researchers who were asked to indicate in free text responses the areas in which their work benefits/suffers when working from home. More details of the pilot study are provided in S1 File .

Actual and ideal time spent working from home

To study the actual and ideal time spent working from home, researcher were asked to indicate on a 0–100% scale (1) what percentage of their work time they spent working from home before the pandemic and (2) how much would be ideal for them working from home in the future concerning both research efficiency and work-life balance.

Feasibility of working more from home

With simple Yes/No options, we asked the respondents to indicate whether they think that working more from home would be feasible considering all their other duties (education, administration, etc.) and the given circumstances at home (infrastructure, level of disturbance).

Background information

Background questions were asked by providing preset lists concerning their academic position (e.g., full professor), area of research (e.g., social sciences), type of workplace (e.g., purely research institute), gender, age group, living situation (e.g., single-parent with non-adult child(ren)), and the age and the number of their children.

The respondents were also asked to select one of the offered options to indicate: whether or not they worked more from home during the coronavirus lockdown than before; whether it is possible for them to collect data remotely; whether they have education duties at work; if their research requires intensive team-work; whether their home office is fully equipped; whether their partner was also working from home during the pandemic; how far their office is from home; whether they had to do home-schooling during the pandemic; whether there was someone else looking after their child(ren) during their work from home in lockdown. When the question did not apply to them, they could select the ‘NA’ option as well.

Data preprocessing and analyses

All the data preprocessing and analyses were conducted in R [ 42 ], with the use of the tidyverse packages [ 43 ]. Before the analysis of the survey responses, we read all the free-text comments to ascertain that they do not contain personal information and they are in line with the respondent’s answers. We found that for 5 items the respondents’ comments contradicted their survey choices (e.g., whether they have children), therefore, we excluded the responses of the corresponding items from further analyses (see S1 File ). Following the preregistration, we only conducted descriptive statistics of the survey results.

The summary of the key demographic information of the 704 complete responses is presented in Table 2 . A full summary of all the collected background information of the respondents are available in S1 File .

The results showed that 94% (n = 662) of the surveyed researchers worked more from home during the COVID-19 lockdown compared to the time before. Of these researchers, 47% found that due to working more from home their research became, in general, less efficient, 23% found it more efficient, and 30% found no difference compared to working before the lockdown. Within this database, we also explored the effect of the lockdown on the efficiency of people living with children (n = 290). Here, we found that 58% of them experienced that due to working more from home their research became, in general, less efficient, 20% found it more efficient, and 22% found no difference compared to working before the lockdown. Of those researchers who live with children, we found that 71% of the 21 single parents and 57% of the 269 partnered parents found working less efficient when working from home compared to the time before the lockdown.

When asking about how working more from home would affect the efficiency of their research after the lockdown, of those who have not already been working from home full time (n = 684), 29% assumed that it could make their research, in general, less efficient, 29% said that it would be more efficient, and 41% assumed no difference compared to the time before the lockdown ( Fig 1 ).

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Focusing on the efficiency of the subgroup of people who live with children (n = 295), we found that for 32% their research work would be less efficient, for 30% it would be no different, and for 38% it would be more efficient to work from home after the lockdown, compared to the time before the lockdown.

When comparing working from home to working in the office in general, people found that they can better achieve certain aspects of the research in one place than the other. They indicated that in the office they are better at sharing thoughts with colleagues, keeping in touch with their team, and collecting data, whereas at home they are better at working on their manuscript, reading the literature, and analyzing their data ( Fig 2 ).

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The bars represent response averages of the given aspects.

We also asked the researchers how much of their work time they spent working from home in the past, and how much it would be ideal for them to work from home in the future concerning both research efficiency and well-being. Fig 3 shows the distribution of percentages of time working from home in the past and in an ideal future. Comparing these values for each researcher, we found that 66% of them want to work more from home in the future than they did before the lockdown, whereas 16% of them want to work less from home, and 18% of them want to spend the same percentage of their work time at home in the future as before. (These latter calculations were not preregistered).

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Object name is pone.0249127.g003.jpg

Taken all their other duties (education, administration, etc.) and provided circumstances at home (infrastructure, level of disturbance), of researchers who would like to work more from home in the future (n = 461), 86% think that it would be possible to do so. Even among those who have teaching duties at work (n = 376), 84% think that more working from home would be ideal and possible.

Researchers’ work and life have radically changed in recent times. The flexibility allowed by the mobilization of technology and the continuous access to the internet disintegrated the traditional work-life boundary. Where, when, and how we work depends more and more on our own arrangements. The recent pandemic only highlighted an already existing task: researchers’ worklife has to be redefined. The key challenge in a new work-life model is to find strategies to balance the demands of work and personal life. As a first step, the present paper explored how working from home affects researchers’ efficiency and well-being.

Our results showed that while the pandemic-related lockdown decreased the work efficiency for almost half of the researchers (47%), around a quarter (23%) of them experienced that they were more efficient during this time compared to the time before. Based on personal experience, 70% of the researchers think that after the lockdown they would be similarly (41%) or more efficient (29%) than before if they could spend more of their work-time at home. The remaining 30% thought that after the lockdown their work efficiency would decrease if they worked from home, which is noticeably lower than the 47% who claimed the same for the lockdown period. From these values we speculate that some of the obstacles of their work efficiency were specific to the pandemic lockdown. Such obstacles could have been the need to learn new methods to teach online [ 44 ] or the trouble adapting to the new lifestyle [ 45 ]. Furthermore, we found that working from the office and working from home support different aspects of research. Not surprisingly, activities that involve colleagues or team members are better bound to the office, but tasks that need focused attention, such as working on the manuscript or analyzing the data are better achieved from home.

A central motivation of our study was to explore what proportion of their worktime researchers would find ideal to work from home, concerning both research efficiency and work-life balance. Two thirds of the researchers indicated that it would be better to work more from home in the future. It seemed that sharing work somewhat equally between the two venues is the most preferred arrangement. A great majority (86%) of those who would like to work more from home in the future, think that it would be possible to do so. As a conclusion, both the work and non-work life of researchers would take benefits should more WFH be allowed and neither workplace duties, nor their domestic circumstances are limits of such a change. That researchers have a preference to work more from home, might be due to the fact that they are more and more pressured by their work. Finishing manuscripts, and reading literature is easier to find time for when working from home.

A main message of the results of our present survey is that although almost half of the respondents reported reduced work efficiency during the lockdown, the majority of them would prefer the current remote work setting to some extent in the future. It is important to stress, however, that working from home is not equally advantageous for researchers. Several external and personal factors must play a role in researchers’ work efficiency and work-life balance. In this analysis, we concentrated only on family status, but further dedicated studies will be required to gain a deeper understanding of the complex interaction of professional, institutional, personal, and domestic factors in this matter. While our study could only initiate the exploration of academics’ WFH benefits and challenges, we can already discuss a few relevant aspects regarding the work-life interface.

Our data show that researchers who live with dependent children can exploit the advantages of working from home less than those who do not have childcare duties, irrespective of the pandemic lockdown. Looking after children is clearly a main source of people’s task overload and, as a result, work-family conflict [ 46 , 47 ]. As an implication, employers should pay special respect to employees’ childcare situations when defining work arrangements. It should be clear, however, that other caring responsibilities should also be respected such as looking after elderly or disabled relatives [ 48 ]. Furthermore, to avoid equating non-work life with family-life, a broader diversity of life circumstances, such as those who live alone, should be taken into consideration [ 49 ].

It seems likely that after the pandemic significantly more work will be supplied from home [ 50 ]. The more of the researchers’ work will be done from home in the future, the greater the challenge will grow to integrate their work and non-work life. The extensive research on work-life conflict, should help us examine the issue and to develop coping strategies applicable for academics’ life. The Boundary Theory [ 26 , 51 , 52 ] proved to be a useful framework to understand the work-home interface. According to this theory, individuals utilize different tactics to create and maintain an ideal level of work-home segmentation. These boundaries often serve as “mental fences” to simplify the environment into domains, such as work or home, to help us attend our roles, such as being an employee or a parent. These boundaries are more or less permeable, depending on how much the individual attending one role can be influenced by another role. Individuals differ in the degree to which they prefer and are able to segment their roles, but each boundary crossing requires a cognitive “leap” between these categories [ 53 ]. The source of conflict is the demands of the different roles and responsibilities competing for one’s physical and mental resources. Working from home can easily blur the boundary between work and non-work domains. The conflict caused by the intrusion of the home world to one’s work time, just as well the intrusion of work tasks to one’s personal life are definite sources of weakened ability to concentrate on one’s tasks [ 54 ], exhaustion [ 55 ], and negative job satisfaction [ 56 ].

What can researchers do to mitigate this challenge? Various tactics have been identified for controlling one’s borders between work and non-work. One can separate the two domains by temporal, physical, behavioral, and communicative segmentation [ 26 ]. Professionals often have preferences and self-developed tactics for boundary management. People who prefer tighter boundary management apply strong segmentation between work and home [ 57 , 58 ]. For instance, they don’t do domestic tasks in worktime (temporal segmentation), close their door when working from home (physical segmentation), don’t read work emails at weekends (behavioral segmentation), or negotiate strict boundary rules with family members (communicative segmentation). People on the other on one side of the segmentation-integration continuum, might not mind, or cannot avoid, ad-hoc boundary-crossings and integrate the two domains by letting private space and time be mixed with their work.

Researchers, just like other workers, need to develop new arrangements and skills to cope with the disintegration of the traditional work-life boundaries. To know how research and education institutes could best support this change would require a comprehensive exploration of the factors in researchers’ WFH life. There is probably no one-size-fits-all approach to promote employees’ efficiency and well-being. Life circumstances often limit how much control people can have over their work-life boundaries when working from home [ 59 ]. Our results strongly indicate that some can boost work efficiency and wellbeing when working from home, others need external solutions, such as the office, to provide boundaries between their life domains. Until we gain comprehensive insight about the topic, individuals are probably the best judges of their own situation and of what arrangements may be beneficial for them in different times [ 60 ]. The more autonomy the employers provide to researchers in distributing their work between the office and home (while not lowering their expectations), the more they let them optimize this arrangement to their circumstances.

Our study has several limitations: to investigate how factors such as research domain, seniority, or geographic location contribute to WFH efficiency and well-being would have needed a much greater sample. Moreover, the country of residence of the respondents was not collected in our survey and this factor could potentially alter the perception of WFH due to differing social and infrastructural factors. Whereas the world-wide lockdown has provided a general experience to WFH to academics, the special circumstances just as well biased their judgment of the arrangement. With this exploratory research, we could only scratch the surface of the topic, the reader can probably generate a number of testable hypotheses that would be relevant to the topic but we could not analyze in this exploration.

Newton working in lockdown became the idealized image of the home-working scientist. Unquestionably, he was a genius, but his success probably needed a fortunate work-life boundary. Should he had noisy neighbours, or taunting domestic duties, he might have achieved much less while working from home. With this paper, we aim to draw attention to how WFH is becoming a major element of researchers’ life and that we have to be prepared for this change. We hope that personal experience or the topic’s relevance to the future of science will invite researchers to continue this work.

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

We would like to thank Szonja Horvath, Matyas Sarudi, and Zsuzsa Szekely for their help with reviewing the free text responses.

Funding Statement

TVL's contribution is part of the research program Sustainable Cooperation – Roadmaps to Resilient Societies (SCOOP). She is grateful to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) for their support in the context of its 2017 Gravitation Program (grant number 024.003.025).

Data Availability

PLoS One. 2021; 16(3): e0249127.

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Johnson Chun-Sing Cheung, D.S.W.

Academic Editor

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Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: PONE-D-20-30010

Title: Researchers working from home: Benefits and challenges

Reviewer’s article summary: This manuscript provides results from a survey on work-life balance among academics who switched to remote work-from-home during the Covid-19 pandemic. I believe the article contributes insight on both the work-life balance among academics and how researchers have experienced their work during the pandemic, and will be of interest to the PloS One audience. Below, please see suggestions for improving the manuscript.

Abstract: Please include a brief statement about methodology, including sample size of the survey population, how the survey was conducted (convenience sample? Recruitment strategy?).

Introduction: The authors questions, “Is the relation between working from home and productivity influenced by personal and professional factors?” This question seems like a non-starter – how could working from home not be influenced by personal and professional factors? Advise revising this question to better focus your key arguments (i.e. what personal and professional factors most influence the productivity of working from home?).

“just as well increased autonomy over time use” – awkward sentence; please revise to clarify.

“physical and social distance to teal members” – do you mean team members?

Table 1 – please refer to the table in the text to guide the audience to this comparison of pros/cons in context of the introduction. It may also better position this manuscript within the literature to include more details from the studies that list these pros/cons (i.e. include the % of people who have reported each of the pros/cons within the table itself, and include a reference to the study where each % was derived).

Reference to Snizek in the 80’s – the benefit of including this quote is questionable; it would be more helpful to include more recent literature on this point since generational changes have perhaps changed this experience.

“just as well high levels of work productivity and satisfaction” – awkward sentence, please revise for clarity.

Materials and Methods: Please provide the study number for IRB approval.

The authors do include links to their study procedure, but it would be helpful for a more complete overview of the procedure within the manuscript so the audience can more easily ascertain the methodology employed. In comparison, the “Materials” section provides intricate detail that may not be necessary (in this reviewer’s opinion, it would be more efficient to simply list the types of questions asked—i.e. “Survey questions asked participants to report on changes that occurred in relation to research work efficiency, comparison of home to office work, amount of time spent…”(etc. or something of this nature)–with a link to the actual survey instrument).

There is no section or statement regarding data analysis. Please describe your analytical procedure (descriptive statistics, any regressions?) and software used for analysis.

Results – Recommend providing a demographics table in the manuscript that displays sample size and % for the information described in the “background information” section. Please include data about the countries where respondents live, if available; if not available, please include a statement regarding residence in the Methods section (i.e. was the sample all within a single country?).

Figures – please include sample size (n = ) in the figure titles.

” From these values we can assume that some of the obstacles of their work were specific to the pandemic lockdown and not directly to working from home” – please explain and clarify.

“…seems to be a generally wanted and beneficial model of work” – this statement seems to ignore the result that nearly half of respondents reported being less efficient during the pandemic. Recommend revising this statement, and including a summary that the results indicate although almost half of the respondents reported reduced work efficiency, they would prefer the current remote work setting to some extent in the future. May also be useful to note that the implications of this require further investigation – what is it about this new work situation that people prefer? What amount of time did people previously spend in commute that they now can use for other tasks or personal interests? What other factors have changed that make the current situation more preferred?

#5 – incomplete reference

There are several references that are now quite old (1987, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009…) – Recommend reviewing these carefully to ensure that there is not more recent literature that would shed better light on the subject.

Figure 1 – recommend revising the X axis to show sample size, and the bar labels to show % to increase clarity of results.

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/ . PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at gro.solp@serugif . Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Author response to Decision Letter 0

17 Feb 2021

Dear Dr. Johnson Cheung,

We are happy to submit a revised version of our manuscript to PLOS One.

We would like to thank you and the reviewer for their comments and suggestions.

Below, you can find the detailed responses to all comments in bold.

Balazs Aczel, on behalf of all co-authors

Reviewer #1

We have added these aspects to the Abstract.

We agree with the reviewer and changed that question as suggested.

Table 1 is referred to in the text, just above the table. After due consideration of this suggestion, we judged that three paragraphs about the pros/cons provide sufficient details on the given topic. We found no sound way to merge the empirical reports of the referred studies to provide overall percentages of people reporting each pros/cons.

The old Snizek reference serves as an indicator that academics have already experienced some of the drawbacks of working from home at the start of the popularity of personal computers. We have now extended our Introduction with more studies from the recent literature, especially with those conducted during the pandemic.

We have now placed the Procedure section before the Materials section. At the beginning of the Materials section, we provide a link to the original content of our Qualtrics survey. This file contains the wording of the items and the display logic of the questions. We would also prefer to keep the detailed description of the survey items in the manuscript as most of the items were developed by the authors for the study. Should the Editor prefer that, we could move the Materials section to the Supporting Information and leave just the link to the exact survey questions in the manuscript.

Now, we state in the Data preprocessing and Analyses section that we used the R statistical software for the analyses and that we report only descriptive statistical results in this study.

The table with the sample size and proportions for all the levels of all the survey items is provided in the Supplementary Materials. However, as the whole table is more than 4 pages long, we think that by including the table in the main text we would corrupt the readability of the manuscript.

Now, we state in the Sampling section that the country of residence of the respondents is not known.

The sample sizes are now included in the figure titles.

We would like to thank the reviewer for pointing out the vagueness of this section. We rephrased the sentence and added one more sentence to the section to clarify our point.

We have now updated this sentence incorporating the reviewer’s suggestion. The updated paragraph is on page 16.

We fixed the incomplete reference.

We agree that some of our references are from the ‘80s or ‘90s, yet they are still good sources of our claims (e.g., how researchers found working from home when personal computers started or that setting up a home office comes with physical and infrastructural demands). Nevertheless, we have added more recent studies to our references, especially from the relevant literature that has been published since our initial submission 5 months ago:

Johnson N, Veletsianos G, Seaman J. US Faculty and Administrators’ Experiences and Approaches in the Early Weeks of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Online Learn. 2020;24(2):6–21.

Barrero JM, Bloom N, Davis SJ. Why Working From Home Will Stick. Univ Chic Becker Friedman Inst Econ Work Pap. 2020;(2020–174).

Korbel JO, Stegle O. Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on life scientists. Genome Biol. 2020;21(113).

Ghaffarizadeh SA, Ghaffarizadeh SA, Behbahani AH, Mehdizadeh M, Olechowski A. Life and work of researchers trapped in the COVID-19 pandemic vicious cycle. bioRxiv. 2021;

Thank you for the recommendation. We have now modified this figure.

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

23 Feb 2021

PONE-D-20-30010R1

Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 09 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at gro.solp@enosolp . When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Reviewer #1:

Reviewer’s response to revisions: Overall, the authors have revised the manuscript to increase clarity and improve understanding of the contributions that this research provides regarding the future outlook for academics working from home. I have a few minor comments:

Limitations: This revised document brings to light the fact that 1) we do not know how the transition to working from home differs between countries since country was not a survey question (which could differ significantly given a number of social and technological/infrastructure factors), and 2) since the analysis only included descriptive statistics there is great potential in learning more from this dataset – and it is wonderful that the dataset will be publicly available. I do recommend adding a statement on limitations, both because it is a best practice, and because it shows that the authors have been thoughtful about the limits of their current analysis.

Results – Recommend providing a demographics table in the manuscript that displays sample size and % for the information described in the “background information” section. I appreciate the authors’ response to this request, but suggest that as a standard practice a shortened version of the key demographics could be provided in a table within the text, and the remainder of the demographics table could be in the supplemental material (having these results within the table is standard in my field since it provides the background information necessary for academics to easily understand the full scope of the results). In response to the question of length, I would suggest that the paragraph that lists the % of respondents who were male/female, etc. could be shortened and simply refer to the table instead.

Figure 1 – recommend revising the X axis to show sample size, and the bar labels to show % to increase clarity of results. The authors responded that this change was made in the revision, but I could not find the updated figure in the revised document.

Author response to Decision Letter 1

Overall, the authors have revised the manuscript to increase clarity and improve

understanding of the contributions that this research provides regarding the future outlook for

academics working from home. I have a few minor comments:

Limitations: This revised document brings to light the fact that 1) we do not know how the

transition to working from home differs between countries since country was not a survey

question (which could differ significantly given a number of social and

technological/infrastructure factors), and 2) since the analysis only included descriptive

statistics there is great potential in learning more from this dataset – and it is wonderful that

the dataset will be publicly available. I do recommend adding a statement on limitations, both

because it is a best practice, and because it shows that the authors have been thoughtful

about the limits of their current analysis.

We have now included a statement of limitations regarding the missing information

on country of residence and made it more clear in the limitations section that the

present study was only exploratory.

Results – Recommend providing a demographics table in the manuscript that displays

sample size and % for the information described in the “background information” section. I

appreciate the authors’ response to this request, but suggest that as a standard practice a

shortened version of the key demographics could be provided in a table within the text, and

the remainder of the demographics table could be in the supplemental material (having

these results within the table is standard in my field since it provides the background

information necessary for academics to easily understand the full scope of the results). In

response to the question of length, I would suggest that the paragraph that lists the % of

respondents who were male/female, etc. could be shortened and simply refer to the table

We have now included the key demographics as a table (Table 2) in the manuscript in

addition to the full summary of all the responses in the Supplementary information.

Figure 1 – recommend revising the X axis to show sample size, and the bar labels to show

% to increase clarity of results. The authors responded that this change was made in the

revision, but I could not find the updated figure in the revised document.

We made sure that all the figures are updated and uploaded with this submission

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.pdf

Decision Letter 2

12 Mar 2021

PONE-D-20-30010R2

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ , click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at gro.solp@gnillibrohtua .

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact gro.solp@sserpeno .

Acceptance letter

16 Mar 2021

Dear Dr. Aczel:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact gro.solp@sserpeno .

If we can help with anything else, please email us at gro.solp@enosolp .

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Johnson Chun-Sing Cheung

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Top 10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Working from Home

Table of contents.

Let’s be real, no matter where you’re working from, you’re still doing just that: working.

So, should you work from home or work from the office? It honestly comes down to the environment you’ll be most effective in, along with the industry you’re in. (And how nice your home office is.)

With that said, let’s take a look at some of the classic benefits of telecommuting!

Top 10 Advantages of Working from Home

Flexible schedule. You can take breaks at any moment, feel no rush to hang up on your family members when they call, and eat lunch at any weird time you want.
Custom environment. Set up your noise level just the way you want it — somewhere between insanely quiet to being at the front row of a Lady Gaga concert. And if you’re mindful of your workspace ergonomics , you can create a stronger rhythm for your workflows.
Cozy clothes. You get to wear those sweatpants from college with the letters peeling off, or the leggings your friends don’t know you own. (And hopefully never will.)
It’s easier to make calls. You won’t have to scramble to find a conference room or deal with a particularly chatty co-worker. (Granted, kids and pets at home can make this tough for some remote employees.)
Knock off some weekend to-do’s. That Mt. Everest laundry pile waiting for you? That thing you set a reminder to get from the store 11 weeks ago? Cross. It. Off.
No office distractions. Avoid co-workers debating the merits of cryptocurrency, sirens wailing outside your window, the AC kicking in as you hide your icicle tears.
Zero commuting. From bed to … bed? Hey I’m not judging, it’s nice.
Save money. Lunch is expensive if you work in a city or downtown. In San Francisco, it’s not crazy to see a $15 sandwich or $4 coffee. At home, you can save big time by going to the store and preparing food.
Forget crowds and traffic. No stuffing yourself into a rickety transportation tube, having people scuff your new shoes, or walking behind agonizingly slow people who apparently don’t know what a straight line is. (Am I bitter? No … not bitter … )
More time with loved ones. Take care of a sick significant other at home, be ready for your kids earlier in the day, get some extra snuggles in with your doggo, or simply get some quiet time to yourself!

Top 10 Disadvantages of Working from Home

Willpower. Gotta get jamming on this new project, but Netflix says you still have 4 episodes of Tiger King to watch…
Difficulty sticking to a routine. The order you do things at work is almost never the order you do things at home. It can be tough to mirror your schedule and processes once outside the office.
Missing important calls or pings. Oops, my phone was on do not disturb and I missed a meeting! Or my boss slacked me and asked to prioritize something else and now it’s 4:45pm …
Calling UberEats anyways. You thought you were saving money, didn’t you? Blam-o! $20 minimum and a $5 fee for the higher rated Thai place. Should’ve remembered to buy bread …
Power naps. This could arguably could be in advantages … unless it accidentally lasts 45 minutes after your delivered double entree Thai lunch.
Boredom. Those office convos? Kinda missing Susan’s cat stories, eh? How long can you go without seeing another living human being?
Working slowly. Sometimes the office has an energy. Sometimes your home does not.
No second monitor. How did I ever work without two giant screens looming above me??? All 74 of my tabs are essential!
Iffy WiFi. At home or in a cafe, when the wifi start to spaz and you switch locations a couple of times but honestly spend more time parking and ordering a 6-shot mint mojito coffee with coconut milk and 16 grains of sugar than doing work.
Waiting for an answer. You need to ask a super quick question, but it’ll impact how you do something for the next hour or even the rest of the day. And there’s no response. (Cue “The Waiting.” )

The Office Michael Scott call me ASAP as possible

FOMO at Home. FOMO at Work.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

When you’re at work, nothing sounds more amazing than a toasty day indoors with your favorite blanket. When you’re at home, you reminisce about making jokes with your co-workers and wonder if the coffee machine made good coffee that day.

Either way, it’s important to choose the environment you’ll be most successful in. After all, each person has their own unique experience with remote working and finding what works and doesn’t work. One person’s productivity booster can be another’s distracting disaster. As you begin to work longer and build more experience, learning to focus in any surrounding is a valuable life skill, and will only help your professional career in the long run — especially as remote-first companies are gaining traction. If you’re still newer to the remote workforce , start by simply finding out where you do your best work and why.

To Thine Own Self Be True

Some important things to consider are what environment you stay focused in the longest, how long it takes you to get back on track, and how you best communicate. If you’re self-motivated, adhere to a routine well, and enjoy minimal distractions, then working from home is the right choice for you.

If you thrive on social interactions, feel inspired by seeing others working, and stay on track best if others see you, then working from the office is the way to go.

Occasionally there are projects that require more quiet time or more collaboration and resource planning . It’s important to be able to mix it up, depending on where you think you’ll be most productive!

Additional Resources

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14 Things To Consider If You Want To Work Remotely

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Finding a location independent, fully remote job is now nearly a new normal. Pre Covid, a fully remote role was considered mostly an anomaly; 17% of US workers worked out of a home office before 2020. Turn the clock to today and that number is now 44% of US citizens ! Nearly 1 in 2 people are working from home.

If you are wondering if a remote job could be right for you and you are wanting to get an understanding for the advantages and disadvantages to joining the ranks of fully remote workers, read on!

Opportunities To Consider If You Want To Work Remotely

Once companies realized that work productivity increased and company costs decreased once they sent their workers home, many companies opted to remain fully remote, despite the chance to return to the office. Instead, they worked on expanding remote resources and the support network for their now-digital team. Many companies now allow, and even prefer, location independent employees—or at least, developed a hybrid work model—so the opportunities for anyone wanting this kind of flex career have drastically improved.

Of course, as the market has grown, so has the competition. When applying for a remote role, you can be sure that instead of competing against local professionals in your city, you are now competing in a nationwide pool of applicants.

Another aspect to consider when looking into working remotely is whether you want to pursue your own business or brand through freelance work, or opt to pursue a more structured career within a developed company.

Where should you start looking for flex careers?

The following are a great place to start:

WeWorkRemotely

SearchRemotely

Working Nomads

For freelancer specific work:

Freelancer.com

Authentic Jobs

Hubstaff Talent

What kind of fully remote work is available?

The type of professional remote work that is currently available to you is basically now across the board, ranging from copyediting to billing to engineering. Working in the digital space does not really limit you professionally anymore, as different companies have gone remote. You can find high-quality professional roles, whether you are looking for an entry level, intermediate, or senior-level position.

According to BusinessInsider , the most common remote roles are as follows:

Virtual Assistant

Customer Support Specialist

Marketing Manager

English Language Teacher

Front-end Developer

Web Designer

Business Development Manager

Social Media Coordinator

Product Manager

Curriculum Designer

As you can see, these remote opportunities are diverse and support a variety of professional goals and interests. From marketing to education to web design to business development to management, you are not limited in your career path if you choose to pursue a remote work life.

What are the advantages of working remotely?

Fewer distractions and increased work performance.

77% of remote workers report greater productivity when they’re working from home . Turns out the water cooler talk takes up more time and attention than expected!

The ability to work from the comfort of your own home

Working in PJs and spending time with family just became more possible!

Flexibility with your schedule

When working remotely, you will have more wiggle room concerning your schedule and routine. However, this is not to say that you get to pick your own hours, start time, and end time, as this is highly dependent on the company you work for. (They may still require a specific clock in- and out- time.) Each company is different, but odds are, flexibility will be in your favor. Many employees find that working remotely affords them precious moments in their schedule to carve out time for working out , cook and eat healthier at home, use a fifteen minute break to read , or go outside for a quick walk. All instead of spending it in a break room at work.

Work-Life Balance

75% of remote employees say working offsite has improved their work-life balance , leading to improved mental health . More of your schedule and environment is up to your discretion and you are able to dictate many of the terms on which you work. Say bye-bye to a toxic work environment or an unpleasant coworker or manager. You can blast the music of your choice. You save money on work outfits and dress exactly as you wish (except for waist-up when on video calls ). You can make a cozy, ergonomic home office or take your work laptop to a coffee shop when you need a change of scenery. You have less chance of getting whatever cold or bug is going around the office. The independence is liberating!

Location Independence

Some companies only support hiring or health care in specific states, but many have no restrictions on geographic location, which literally opens up the world to you. You could become a digital nomad and travel; you can visit out-of-state family and friends without taking up PTO.

No commuting hassle when you work from home! The average commute time is 27 minutes , and what a waste of life that can add up to be!

Higher Income

On average, the annual income of remote workers is $4,000 higher than that of other workers.

What are the Disadvantages of Working Remotely?

What are the drawbacks to living and working so flexibly? The three biggest challenges associated with remote work are unplugging after work (27%), loneliness (14%), and communication (20%).

The Lack of Company Culture

You miss out on company culture. A physical company workspace can increase general happiness within and loyalty to a company.

Relationships with Coworkers

You miss out on co-workers' relationships. Coworkers can make all the difference in making your job something to look forward to. In a remote role, you are less likely to get to know your coworkers, no matter how awesome they seem to be from a thousand miles away.

Training Limitations

Training, learning, and communication can suffer when your team is remote. Many companies have improved and streamlined their training and communication strategies, but for many, it is still a work in progress. When you are training, you no longer can turn to your coworker next to you, tap them on the shoulder, and have them double-check your work or ask for a quick walkthrough.

Increased Loneliness

A fully remote role increases the potential for isolation and loneliness; independence is a two-sided coin. Working eight hours a day in the privacy of your home can turn out to be too quiet and socially-depriving for some.

Distractions

Statistics say there are fewer distractions when working from home, but on the flip side, working from home could provide even more, for example, if you have kids.

Boundaries Between Work/Home Life Can Suffer

Unbalanced work/home life. It can be hard to draw a line between your work and personal life if they both happen in the same space, and this could look like a number of things. free time now, extending your hours.

Difficult to Maintain a Routine

Working from home can make it difficult to maintain a good routine or schedule. Too much flexibility can backfire, leading to a lag in motivation, engagement, and performance levels. It may sound amazing at first to be able to wake up, flip open your laptop and start plugging away work from the comfort of your bed, but you may find that over time your routine is suffering, impacting your physical and mental health . You have to make extra efforts to get out of the house, work out, develop a healthy routine, and make social calls and visits.

Is remote work right for you?

While companies were unprepared for the unanticipated transition during the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, they have greatly acclimated to this new normal, with a much better and more developed support system, designed to keep positive employee morale and sense of their company culture alive.

Buffer offers a variety of interesting statistics surrounding remote work, one of which being: 95.3% of remote workers would recommend working remotely to others.

Take a look at the pros and cons of working from home, and be honest with yourself. Do these premises align with your goals, professionally or personally, and do you think you would thrive under these circumstances?

Additional Remote Work Resources:

Time Camp put together an extensive list of resources to check out and browse through for both fun and information. It is a great way to get excited about working remotely!

We Work Remotely has a worthwhile resource page to draw from, including lists of reading materials, communities, and work equipment.

Owl Lab made a cool list of the nine of the best remote work travel programs, which organize housing, travel arrangements, co-working space, gyms, and more, while hopping around the different cities and/or countries.

Check out this helpful and fun article on working remotely while also traveling for inspiration.

14 Things To Consider If You Want To Work Remotely

Benefits & Leave — 8 min

Work from home stipends: a guide for employers

If you have remote employees, a work from home stipend is a great way to ensure that they are physically comfortable and, as a result, productive.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the ways you can encourage your team members to use their work from home stipends, and provide some tips and best practices for ensuring your stipends provide value.

So, let’s jump straight in.

What is a work from home stipend?

What do work from home stipends cover, advantages of work from home stipends, disadvantages of work from home stipends, examples of work from home stipends, best practices for work from home stipends, manage your stipends with remote.

Work from home stipends — also known as remote work stipends — are a financial allowance for employees who work remotely. They are designed to help cover the expenses involved in setting up and maintaining a home office.

According to a recent Forbes Advisor survey, home office stipends are the third-most desired benefit for remote workers.

Are work from home stipends taxable?

This depends on the tax laws in your employee’s location, although, in most countries, stipends are considered taxable income.

You should specify in your stipend policy what exactly your employees can use it for. Generally, they aim to cover the following:

Office furniture

Most work from home stipends are primarily intended for ergonomic office furniture. This equipment is fundamental to preventing strain and injury over long periods, and ensures that your team members are comfortable in their working environment.

Some examples of ergonomic furniture that could be covered by a stipend include:

Ergonomic chairs

Monitor stands

Lighting solutions, like desk lamps

Storage solutions, like drawer units or shelves

Technology and equipment

Most companies provide laptops and relevant peripherals (such as a keyboard and mouse) as standard, meaning they’re not included as part of the employee’s stipend. However, there may be additional supplementary equipment or hardware that the employee needs to be productive, such as:

Monitors (or extra monitors)

Graphic tablets

High-quality webcams

Noise-canceling headphones

Microphones

Software and subscriptions

Again, if your employees require software or subscriptions to do their job, these should be provided as standard — not as part of the stipend. However, your employees may require additional software or subscriptions to make their lives easier or to boost their productivity, such as:

Wellness apps

Organizational tools

Role-specific support tools

Internet and communication expenses

A robust WiFi connection is crucial for home-based remote workers. Therefore, some companies are happy to cover all (or part) of their employees’ internet and communication expenses, including:

Internet plan upgrades

WiFi coverage enhancement (e.g., WiFi extenders or mesh network systems)

Work-related mobile data and calls packages

A dedicated phone line

Working from home also means an increase in household utility bills, which can be covered in part by a stipend. These might include electricity bills and internet bills, as well as an allowance for groceries or food deliveries.

What are the best benefits for remote employees?

Work from home stipends come with a lot of benefits for both you and your team members, including:

Enhanced employee productivity

By providing ergonomic furniture and the latest tech equipment, companies ensure that their remote team members have a work environment that’s conducive to productivity.

Ability to attract and retain talent

According to a recent survey by FlexJobs, 96% of working professionals stated that the ability to work from home at least part of the time would best support their mental health. Offering a work from home stipend on top of that is a great way to make these individuals even more satisfied — and more likely to stay with your company.

Cost savings for employees

Stipends reduce the financial burden of setting up and maintaining a home office, meaning your employees will be less stressed and more productive.

There are, of course, some downsides too such as:

Financial burden on employers

You might have to reallocate funds from other areas to pay these stipends, depending on how large they are. This could potentially put a strain on your financial resources. However, it’s worth remembering that you would have needed to pay equipment costs, energy bills, and other outgoings if your remote employees were working on-site.

Potential inequality among employees

Stipends can create disparities among employees. For instance, those who work in areas with a higher cost of living might find the stipend insufficient compared to colleagues in regions with lower everyday expenses. Unless managed fairly, this discrepancy can lead to feelings of inequality and dissatisfaction, negatively impacting employee morale.

Additional administrative work

Implementing stipends involves setting clear policies, determining eligibility, and managing ongoing payments. This process can be complex and time-consuming.

There is also always the risk that the stipends will be abused. Ensuring that they are used as intended requires receipt monitoring, which can add to the administrative load.

Fortunately, you can easily mitigate this work by using a global HR platform, like Remote . Our platform allows you and your people to easily manage expenses .

At Remote, we offer all our people a generous work from home stipend — and we’re not the only ones. Some other examples of companies that offer such stipends include:

Basecamp. Basecamp’s parent company, 37signals, provides up to $3,000 for desks, desk chairs, computer accessories, and other office furniture during the employee’s first year with the organization.

Buffer. Buffer offers home office allowance of $500 per employee, as well $200 per year for tech accessories and an additional $200 per month for “coffee shop working.” It also offers an internet reimbursement scheme.

Webflow. Webflow provides a monthly $380 stipend to each of its remote employees for their home office needs.

HubSpot. HubSpot provides a $1,000 stipend for its remote employees.

To ensure that your work from home stipend program is effective and successful, consider the following tips:

Clarify your team’s needs

As with any benefit, your stipend is a waste of money if nobody is finding it useful. Therefore, it’s essential to understand the needs of your workforce and tailor the stipend according to those needs.

To find out what your employees need:

Conduct surveys . Ask your workers to answer surveys to gain insights on how to improve their home office setup. Make sure that the questionnaire covers various home office aspects, such as furniture, technology, and other work-related tools.

Set up one-on-one meetings . If you want a more detailed understanding of your workforce’s needs, set up one-on-one meetings with individual team members. Doing so can help you better understand these workers’ unique requirements.

Analyze specific remote job roles . Revisit the specific tasks assigned to each remote role and double-check that these employees have the resources and tools they need to deliver optimal performance.

Define your policies clearly

Develop clear guidelines on what the stipend covers and clearly outline the process for receiving the stipend.

There are several ways you can offer your remote work stipend:

As a one-time stipend (a lump sum for newly hired employees to set up their home office.)

As a regular stipend (monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual allowances for purchasing necessary items)

As reimbursements (monthly or annual reimbursements of exact costs)

Set a realistic budget

Budgeting for a stipend program is a balancing act between supporting your workers’ needs and maintaining your company’s financial health.

Review your company's current financial situation and evaluate how much you can realistically allocate to the stipend program without compromising other critical areas of the business.

Monitor and adjust

After implementing your stipend program, monitor its effectiveness.

Gather feedback from employees regularly to gain insights into what’s working and what’s not. Be prepared to make adjustments as necessary, depending on changes in the cost of living and your company’s financial performance.

Work from home stipends are not just a form of financial aid. They represent your company’s investment in its employees’ comfort, productivity, and overall job satisfaction.

If you’re thinking of offering this benefit to your global workers, Remote can help you develop and implement an attractive package while staying legally compliant in all regions. We can also simplify the administrative process, making it quick and simple to manage your people’s expenses.

To find out how exactly we can help your business, talk to one of our friendly experts today.

Guarantee compliance with Remote’s customized global benefits plans

Trust Remote’s global HR experts to build curated, locally compliant benefits packages at globally competitive rates.

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