Since the pandemic, working from home has become more commonplace, with the priorities of employees shifting in the favour of preserving work-life balance. But lingering negative assumptions remain: that remote employees are working from their beds, or watching Netflix, or simply lazy and unproductive. Earlier this week, Amazon announced the end of its hybrid work policy and that all staff must return to the office five days a week from January.
Also this week, the government came out in favour of working from home, with business secretary Jonathan Reynolds saying that employers “need to judge people on outcomes and not a culture of presenteeism”, with Labour set to unveil its Employment Rights Bill, which includes a “default right” for flexible working, the right to disconnect outside of working hours and a ban on zero-hours contracts. The thinking is that a default right for flexible working will make employees more loyal, motivated and resilient.
But does working from home actually boost productivity? And what are the pros and cons? We spoke to three people who work from home about whether it works for them, and how it impacts their productivity.
‘Working from home enables more women to stay in work’
Victoria Brown, 43, Solihull, mother-of-two and executive coach
Victoria Brown is the mother of two young boys and says she is more ‘focused’ and ‘productive’ working from home (Photo: Corrine West)
I’m a brand story and executive coach and I run my business from home. I coach business founders and leaders on how to communicate better with their customers and employees. I’m also a mother of two young boys, who are five and seven.
I started working from home during the pandemic when I worked for a corporate company. I loved the flexibility. It helped me to juggle work and my kids. My commute before was an hour each way so it saved me two hours a day. If the nursery or the school rings, and you’ve got to get to them, it was helpful to be able to drop everything and get there. Eventually, the company I worked for was pushing to go back into the office and I ended up leaving. It wasn’t purely because of that, but it was a factor.
I now work solely from home and I’m definitely more productive. If I’m working on a project and I’ve got to get my head down, I get more done at home. I can be more focused, because I haven’t got people distracting me. You need space to think properly which you can’t do in a busy office.
Juggling childcare is definitely a factor in my set-up. You don’t realise until you’re a parent just how difficult it is, especially when they’re really small. The nursery is constantly ringing you to tell you that they’re ill and you’ve got to come and get them and they can’t go back for 48 hours. You’re thinking: how am I going to make this work? I don’t know how I used to commute to the office every day and be around for the kids.
My husband is brilliant and he’ll do everything he can to support and do pickups, but he has a busy job and a long commute, so he can’t always do that. Someone has got to be around and it takes the weight off my mind knowing that I can do that.
Working from home, I’m about a mile from their school so it’s a short drive to pick them up. They’re in after school club two days, and the other three days I pick them up straight after school – I want to be able to spend time with them.
It’s much more doable than it would be if I were in an office. If the school called me and I’m in the middle of a meeting and an hour away, it’s not great for me or my kids. It’s also not great for your employer, because if you’re constantly juggling everything, they’re not going to get the best out of you. If you work from home, it solves some of those issues that create a lot of noise in your mind.
Having flexibility in the workplace is going to affect women the most. I know a lot of men help, but more women are doing childcare and if they can’t work, it’s going to damage their career. Some women won’t be able to get into an office every day. If they can do it from home, it enables more women to stay in work.
‘I do two shifts for two different places on the same day, without them knowing’
Sarah*, 32, London, freelance copywriter
I’m a copywriter and about a year ago, I realised that if I work from home, I can do two shifts for two different places on the same day, without them knowing. I do it at least four or five times a month, and sometimes as much as twice a week.
When I’m working two shifts, I’ll wake up at 6am and go for a run or a walk, and start work at 7am. I’m much more productive. If I’ve got a shift that’s supposed to start at 10am, I’ve already done three hours of work by that point and got a lot of it done.
I usually finish around 4:30pm but I’ll keep myself online. Sometimes it can end up being a longer day, but that gives me a bit of leeway. The working day actually finishes at 6pm, so if I haven’t got through everything I need to, then I’ve got a couple of hours. I find it all evens out, and as long as you’ve done the work, people don’t mind when you submit it to them.
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With the commute being from my bed to my desk, there’s so much more time to play with. I have more energy, and it gives me time to do exercise in the morning, which makes me more alert and awake, so I know that I can cope with two shifts at once.
With tools like Slack, you can be available to work for two different places. I’m much more productive if I compartmentalise my day – I do a bit of work for one place and then have a little break, and then do a bit of work for another place. It forces me to get work done in those set hours.
Working like this helps me change up my day. If you’re in an office, and it gets to the afternoon, you can feel a three o’clock slump. But if I’ve varied things throughout the day, I don’t get stuck in a rut – it makes my day more flexible and interesting. I get more done than when I’m doing two things at once than if I was working on one boring task. I actually feel more awake towards the end of the day.
If I wasn’t working from home, I wouldn’t be able to get through tedious tasks as quickly. At home, I can get through them in half the time, which means that I can do what would have taken me a day in an office in half a day at home. I get distracted in offices. At home, I can put on white noise, which helps – and I don’t find it as effective if I have it on using headphones in an office.
If I’m just doing one shift, I enjoy going into an office for the social side of it and to have a change of scene. But on days where you’ve got a list and you just need to get stuff done, I think working from home can be really conducive to that.
*Name changed
‘People disappear on us, leaving us in the lurch’
Rachel Luke, 35, Gloucester, founder of a virtual assistant company
Rachel Luke is a founder of a business and admits it can be tricky to manage remote staff (Photo: Helen Holt)
I started my company just over four years ago. It started off as a virtual assistant business, but it’s grown into the organic marketing agency that it is today.
I work from home 100 per cent. I’ve got an office in my home and, being a parent, it helps a lot with childcare. I’ve got a little boy, he’s six. It means that I can get so much more done and I can be a lot more intentional with my time. In one of the last employee jobs, I had an 85 mile commute each way. And that made me vow to never do a long commute ever again.
I am a military spouse, and about half of the team are also military spouses, which is fantastic, because we are quite often incredibly talented individuals that struggle with regular work because of getting moved around the country and the world so much. We’re all freelance. Some work more than others, but nobody does 40 hours a week.
Something that I’ve had to learn in the early days of the business, is the impact of working from home. We did have some issue with people disappearing on us, which would sometimes leave us somewhat in the lurch.
We’d always get the work done. But a story that we’d heard time and time again from people who had come to us after having bad experiences with other virtual assistants [was that] they could just vanish. Quite often it would be health related.
Back at the beginning, we had a member of staff that we unfortunately had to let go because whenever she got poorly, she would just disappear. And obviously that’s just not acceptable. Sometimes it would be mental health-related, sometimes it would be physical health related. Certain people just weren’t very good at informing us.
Because they’re remote, you can’t exactly go and knock on the door and see if they’re ok. But now we’ve put lots of things into place now to try and build the culture and make it feel more like a workplace so that if something does happen, they know to let us know as soon as possible instead of just vanishing off the face of the earth. Being remote [means] we need really high standards of communication.
We’re working with a corporate company and they are continually surprised at the amount that we get done within the time. If we start the clock, we start work. So, they are getting way more value for money.
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