List of Pros and Cons of Working From Home

There are many reasons to setup a home office. You may choose to work from home to save on office rent or to spend time with kids and family. Just as there are many reasons to work from home, there are also several pros and cons to consider when setting shop at home.

When you work in a formal environment, more often than not all those advantages and benefits of working from home tend to fill our mind, and that normally gives many people the idea of being their own boss. There’s absolutely that working from home comes with its own fair share of rewards and drawbacks, and these will be discussed in this article.

While the idea of working from home entices many, it’s certainly worth noting that it’s not for everyone. And for this reason it will be important to weight the advantages and disadvantages before making it a part of your work process. The following are pros and cons associated with working from your home, and they should help you decide whether working from home is ideal for you or not.

List of Pros of Working From Home

1. Spend More Time With Kids and Family
One of the biggest advantages of home-based work is that you’ll get to spend more time with your kids and family. You will get the opportunity to monitor their progress and provide them with much needed guidance and support necessary for quicker and easier development.

2. Reduced Travel Time
This another major advantage in that you reduce travel time. Millions waste time on a daily basis commuting to and fro from work. It’s also made worse in major cities that experience gridlock traffic during office hours, also referred to as ‘rush hours’.

3. Saving on Wardrobe Clothing
The whole concept of not having to maintain formal clothing in your wardrobe is another advantage of working from home. If you work from home, there’s definitely no need to wear a suit and tie or other uncomfortable formal clothing. You can simply put on your comfortable casual wear which may actually increase your productivity.

4. Cutting on Office Rent
If you have your own personal office and don’t work for another company the working from home can bring about massive savings in office rent.

5. Saving on Taxes
You can save on your taxes by ensuring detailed and thorough filing of all the expenses that you incur.

6. You Can Share Certain Fixed Expenses
Supplementary expenses can be greatly lowered since they will be shared by both your home and office. Stationary, telephone, internet and other overhead expenses will be shared between your home and office, thus lowering costs if it’s your own personal business.

7. Flexibility
There’s a lot of flexibility associated with working from home. You can determine your timings and accommodate different tasks that require completion.

8. Reduction in Distractions
Although there may be a number of distractions at home, you’ll be able to control them much easier than those that come from employees, coworkers and other workplace related noises in a formal work environment.

9. Your Days Will Be Less Stressful
When working from home, you will have greater control of your stress levels and be able to walk away easily or take breaks when the stress heat begins to brew up. This is much different to a formal work environment where you’ll be required to work until your designated break time, which more often will be hours away.

10. You Save Some Money
Not only will you able to make savings by avoiding daily travel to work, but you can also remove a significant portion of your home-based office expenses on your taxes when working from home.

11. Higher Potential for Productivity
When you eliminate a chunk of your travel time to and fro from work, it gives you more time to focus on your work. Even if you don’t do so, at least the option will be there and that equates to greater productivity.

12. Fewer Interruptions
There’s no doubt that many people employed in “open plan” workspaces suffer from distractions. Most of them always look for ways to mitigate such auditory and visual distractions, and one way of doing so is by working from home. At least in that way you’ll be able to deal with any potential distractions and eliminate them for good.

13. Balance Work and Personal Life
Many working professionals struggle to find a balance between their personal lives and work. Working from home has the ability to make this balance a lot easier to find and maintain.

Keep in mind that life is not all lovely and rosy when you work from home. Flip the coin and you’ll note that there are also a number of disadvantages that come with from home, and they are quite many.

List of Cons of Working From Home

1. Sliding into Slackness
Because there’s no pressure to begin work at a certain time or dress in certain manner, it is very easy to sleep more and delay that start of work. Under such circumstances, productivity can be greatly affected if you don’t maintain some level of discipline.

2. Dealing With Personal Chores
Personal chores can pile and become very difficult to ignore when working from home. Home-based tasks be so overwhelming such that many people fall prey to them. A simple task that could have taken a mere 15 minutes could spiral and end up taking a lot more of your time.

3. No Competitive Spirit
One major drawback of working from home is the non-presence of human interaction. Peers and colleagues help keep competitiveness alive and that enhances productivity. Going to your work office can be a good get away from all the stresses and throbs at home, and the opposite is true. However if your office is at home, then there isn’t any escape from the stress.

4. Isolation
Peace and tranquility are boon to productivity from home working, but keep in mind the flip side as well. Working from home can isolate you from time to time and that may not be a good attribute for productivity. You could however keep in touch with your fellow colleagues, associates and coworkers via phone, instant message or Skype. Heading out for a quick bite and coffee or attending networking events frequently will get you mingling with other people as well.

5. Less Collaborative
If working from home requires some element of collaboration with a co-worker, it may add a layer of complexity into your processes. Using platforms like Facetime, Skype and other video chatting tools may help, but in the end, nothing really beats a face-to-face meeting.

6. Distractions
You’ll be forgiven to have thought that less distractions were a part of working from home. It’s when you miss out on distractions in the workplace like co-workers talking on the phone or stopping what they were doing to chat with you. Unfortunately home-based distractions are there too. Daytime television, cooking and laundry are some of the immediate distractions, and not forgetting the temptation to log on to Facebook and or Twitter. The bottom line is that working from home comes with a great deal of distractions, and for this you’ll need some extreme diligence to effectively achieve it.

7. Flexibility
As much as flexibility is an additional benefit of working from home, but if your friends and family know that you are working from home, they may actually interpret it as you are more available that you really are. They may visit you and constantly ask for favors in total oblivion to your work.

8. Relationships Become Harder to Foster
It is extremely difficult to develop relationships and establish trust with clients and colleagues when you actually don’t have daily face-to-face interaction.

9. Reduced Ad-Hoc Learning
Office based workers are always have the opportunity to learn more from their colleagues an peers. Each time you work at home, you’ll need to put more effort to network and learn different opportunities by yourself.

10. No IT Department
Whether like it or not, computers and other technology don’t always work the way we anticipate them to. At the office you’ll have easy access to an in-house IT professional to attend to any glitches. This however won’t be the case with working from home, and your machines may take much longer to be attended to.

From these pros and cons, you can assess and ascertain whether working from home is actually for you or not. You need to consider the kind of work you’ll do and whether you have access to the tools and equipment you need.