Working From Home: My Notes

I was not prepared for this. I was never prepared. Never expected it to happen to me. But it did. 8 months back I got to know my next job will see my home as my office. Work From Home (WFH).

I didn’t have a choice, like many, many of those who took this option to keep their career graph up. I did have a choice to relocate to another city and work for the same firm. But I chose WFH option.

Previously, when somebody said she is WFH, I would nod my head in agreement saying, “Yes, that’s something you like and guess it is doing you good”. After putting in a decade plus of man hours into career from an office environment with cubicles, cafeterias, friends, boardrooms, discussion rooms, office gossips, office politics, celebrations and hearing, seeing peers…. The first couple of months of WHF was like how one feels when an action packed movie is muted. Radio silence.

This silence used to buzz inside my head too much. I couldn’t take the silence around me when I opened my laptop in the mornings. I needed the sound of phones ringing. I wanted to see new saris, chudidhars clad co-workers, male co-workers sneaking out for a ‘smoke break’, the extended coffee breaks, team members… I wanted my office environment back.

And silence always teaches you to accept yourself, accept reality, to accept a personality in you which you never discover in an office buzz. Working in silence means it’s the sound from keyboard and your mobile ringing that brings you back to the room. Working in silence means you talk to yourself more… you read the mails slowly and carefully, you tend to dig into Internet more to get answers to your questions.

You discover your potential to imagine and implement the imagination in your own signature.

Philosophy aside, WFH has its pros and cons. Two sides of the same coin.

Let me talk about the dark side and keep the brighter side to sign off with. Will leave a better taste to your reading J

Out-of-sight means Out-of-mind. And this is true when working from home. You will be out of sight of peers, seniors, management team till you attend a Video Conference. Your immediate reporting manager, reportees and a few senior managers who you deliver to or work for/with, will remember you. But opportunities like a quick presentation to client, or being in client visit, being pulled into a discussion where your contribution changes the course of project etc. will never happen. Your voice will not be heard by those who would have when they pass by your cubicle. Your good morning greetings get confined to just a call or two or mails. The elevator greetings do not happen. Office peers tend to slowly tuck you into a faraway corner of their random memory. And sometimes, working from home tends to become working for home. Family expects you to run the home more efficiently than how it used to be when you were not seen home from 09:00 AM to 06:00 PM. And that’s a tall order as your workload from office does not decrease but ‘home work’ does. At times, your part-time domestic help too takes off, thinking you are home to cover for her. Bad scene.

But it is not all that bad either. The brighter side is something I discovered and is experiencing at present. WFH makes you feel you are stronger to ideate, conceptualize and present your ideas as your own. These are your ideas that you thought of or came across on your own. You get the space to innovate by self and present it for review. When ideas or concepts are submitted for your reviews, the expectation is you will do a fair job without being biased. As you are shielded from office gossip and politics, one develops a fairness to all based on their output that you get to see in the work you and they do together. WFH means you improve your research skills double fold as you are left to find your answers. The luxury of sliding your chair to the next cubicle for a suggestion is absent. WFH means you are always reachable by your team, reporting manager and management 24X7 making you more dependable for a quick turnaround. WFH means you work without getting distracted with events or mock fire drillsJ. Not to forget you can always get into a conference call (not VC) in your pyjamas or capris!

It is not uncommon for men too opting for WFH profile these days. And in giving your employees the flexibility to work even from under an apple tree, you are setting them free to think, be themselves but the discipline to get the work done to ensure they are on top of things and seen.

If asked to select between two jobs: One that allows flexibility to work from home and work from office and the other either one of the options, tomorrow… I would select the one that offers me the flexibility, like how I am having today. :)

Because on some days, one needs this flexibility to work from anywhere to deliver out of the world solutions, ideas or projects. Being boxed into a cubicle or surrounded by silence of home will not help to get the best out of me J