As many employees are moving into their third solid month of working from home, many people have found themselves wondering if they could work from home permanently. Their opinion about their remote status has likely changed weekly if not daily due to factors like how well technology is working that day, or how well the platform for your children’s remote learning is operating during any given hour. However, if you’re evaluating your work from home experience and wonder if this “remote employee thing” really could work for you, here are four signs you might just want to lobby for your remote status to become permanent.
You Schedule Meetings to Actually Save Time
You have found that there is value in face to face virtual meetings. You can correctly identify when an issue will escalate into a never ending email conversation or misunderstanding, and evolve into a colossal waste of time. To circumvent this outcome, you call an actual meeting to work through the details, the desired outcome, or head off a misunderstanding before it starts. This is not a skill that is taught in school, and requires high emotional intelligence to identify this scenario before you’re already down the rabbit hole and in a position to mediate an argument between two employees, or between yourself and another co-worker. Conversely, this also means that you do not call meetings just to have meetings, so your colleagues realize when you send a request, you likely have an issue, or key subject that will be discussed and resolved during the meeting, you’re not just setting up a meeting for the sake of filling your day or the calendars of those you work with.
You Get More Done Working From Home
Maybe you weren’t able to stay focused while working from home back in March, but you found an article like this one from Fast Company, took it to heart, and are now able to work distraction free from the comfort of your home. If you haven’t found your rhythm to work at home, it’s ok, try to review the suggestions in the article, and you might find your groove yet. Lots of employees had a tough time adjusting, but once they found their balance between tending to their home lives, and focusing on work, they’ve figured out the recipe that has allowed their productivity to skyrocket. There is a growing preference for remote work as The New York Times reports, “Gallup found that almost 60 percent of Americans working from home would prefer to work remotely “as much as possible” after restrictions are lifted, with 40 percent saying they preferred to return to the workplace.”
Make your Commute Time work for you
Working from home for the long run might work for you if you’ve figured out how to convert your commute time into something that adds value to your day. Whether you’ve given yourself an extra hour of sleep each day, or added five hours of exercise into your week when you previously struggled to complete one or two, you’re finding strategies to add value to your week in ways that were not previously possible because you were crammed into public transportation, or idling in traffic in order to get to your job. This has also likely translated into higher satisfaction with what you’re able to accomplish in any given day, week, or month, and added to your self-esteem and/or improved your overall outlook on your effectiveness in important areas of your life.
Your Colleagues Embrace Technology too
For employees that have tech-savvy colleagues, transitioning to remote work has likely been easier. Working with co-workers who have a natural inclination to leverage technology, software and virtual platforms to complete their daily tasks have a predisposition to seek out tools to streamline their workflow, collaborate real-time and/or embrace new ways to get work done. If this sounds like your colleagues, they likely feel like you, that they cannot come up with a compelling reason to go back to the office on a regular basis because they are as effective if not more effective working remotely.
If you don’t identify with any or most of these four scenarios, it doesn’t mean you’re not going to ever feel great about working remotely, it’s just that meeting most or all of these criteria mean that working remotely has likely been a sweet respite from the office, and something you have felt reasonably successful doing from nearly the beginning of the pandemic. Don’t lose hope if you want working from home to work for you. Set up a routine, mix it up, and get your hands on a few “best practices” articles about working from home and see if you can find your balance. Don’t give up if it’s something you really want, but also know when you’ve given it your all, and determine it’s not a fit, you’re not alone. There are plenty of people who fall into the category of “I can’t wait to go back to the office.”