I found it interesting that only one employer's opinion on this situation was mentioned and it was in a positive light. I used to work from home two days a week out of my five due to a four-hour round trip commute. We have since moved back into the city and part of the reason was the stress I was under to continually prove to my employers that I was actually working. I kept a log of every task I performed (to the minute) and sent it to my line manager on a Friday evening. I was constantly reassuring colleagues that I'd be available to do their presentations (I'm a presentations designer) and have it back to them in time for their meetings and I was asked EVERY Wednesday by at least one person 'oh, you're not in tomorrow are you?' to which I had to reply 'I'm working from home, so just drop me an email or call my extension' and felt like shouting 'I WILL BE WORKING!!'. My employers forked out £1,000 to set me up with a remote terminal and phone and I was online at 8.55am every day, ready to go, but no-one at my office was ever comfortable with the lack of physical presence.
The crunch came when I was ill on a Wednesday and decided not to do the two hour commute, emailed my HR manager to say I was sick but well enough to work from home after a couple more hours sleep, went back to bed and started work at 8.55 as usual. Later in the day - bearing in mind that I was sick, but actually WORKING - I got an email asking that as I'd worked from home today, which one of my 'work from home' days would I be swapping to work in the office that week? We moved back to the city a month later.
My point is that your employer may want to keep you bad enough to set you up working from home, but in most situations, this will never, ever, EVER be accepted and embraced by your colleagues. They figure you're sitting at home in your PJs (which I was) watching Sally Jesse (which I wasn't) and playing on the internet (which I do just as much at the office - like now!). I loved working from home and would do it again in a heartbeat, but not in a job where I was expected to be 'part of the team'. When I quizzed my manager about the entire thing he said it was about 'visibility'. Apparently even in our enlightened, technologically advance society, you aren't part of a team unless you are physically there.
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I found it interesting that only one employer's opinion on this situation was mentioned and it was in a positive light. I used to work from home two days a week out of my five due to a four-hour round trip commute. We have since moved back into the city and part of the reason was the stress I was under to continually prove to my employers that I was actually working. I kept a log of every task I performed (to the minute) and sent it to my line manager on a Friday evening. I was constantly reassuring colleagues that I'd be available to do their presentations (I'm a presentations designer) and have it back to them in time for their meetings and I was asked EVERY Wednesday by at least one person 'oh, you're not in tomorrow are you?' to which I had to reply 'I'm working from home, so just drop me an email or call my extension' and felt like shouting 'I WILL BE WORKING!!'. My employers forked out £1,000 to set me up with a remote terminal and phone and I was online at 8.55am every day, ready to go, but no-one at my office was ever comfortable with the lack of physical presence. The crunch came when I was ill on a Wednesday and decided not to do the two hour commute, emailed my HR manager to say I was sick but well enough to work from home after a couple more hours sleep, went back to bed and started work at 8.55 as usual. Later in the day - bearing in mind that I was sick, but actually WORKING - I got an email asking that as I'd worked from home today, which one of my 'work from home' days would I be swapping to work in the office that week? We moved back to the city a month later. My point is that your employer may want to keep you bad enough to set you up working from home, but in most situations, this will never, ever, EVER be accepted and embraced by your colleagues. They figure you're sitting at home in your PJs (which I was) watching Sally Jesse (which I wasn't) and playing on the internet (which I do just as much at the office - like now!). I loved working from home and would do it again in a heartbeat, but not in a job where I was expected to be 'part of the team'. When I quizzed my manager about the entire thing he said it was about 'visibility'. Apparently even in our enlightened, technologically advance society, you aren't part of a team unless you are physically there.