JOIN US'Home'work time
Maybe it’s an outcome of recession, maybe it’s convenience, or maybe it’s just a way to beat the daily traffic.
More and more young people in the City are working from home.
For Prateek Mohan Dayal, who runs a start up venture of his own, working from home was an obvious option as they could cut the other overhead costs of working from an external office. “Working from home is an art and I have been trying to master it ever since I quit my job last year. When you work from home, you end up saving a lot of travel time and traffic stress,” he says.
Says Mayank Rungta, “I have just started working for an NGO. Since there is no office, I am required to work from home and it is pretty good to be able to work from anywhere provided you have access to Net. You can use the peak hours of your productivity for the work and the lean hours for personal work.”
Margaret D’souza, a manager who plans and executes ‘home office’ for different companies, says, “The company has the advantage of saving on overheads within the office premise. It also offers the possibility of tapping into talent from all across the country rather than restricting it to certain cities. From the employee’s perspective, the benefits include flexibility with working hours and lowered stress due to absence of travel time.”
But on the flip side, working from home also has a lot of pitfalls.
Points out Prateek, “You fall prey to wasting your time or even worse, feel bored and demotivated.” But that is only the tip of the iceberg.
Sudeshna N, a content developer, feels that its cons outweigh the pros, and thus cannot be sustained as a long term career option.
“There are almost no team interactions, we also have the tendency to work longer which infringes on our personal life. Also, there is high dependency on technology, without which we are virtually paralysed,” says Sudeshna.
“Probably the most challenging aspect is to get people to believe, it’s a real job,” says Margaret.
But like anything else, there are ways of working around the pitfalls. Explains Prateek,
“It’s important to be accountable and track your progress, also don’t work out of your bedroom. Have a separate room that is just for work. Don’t overdo your work.”
In spite of working from home, work is still work, agrees Prateek, “I need to give myself breaks just like I did when I had a corporate job and I need to review progress just like I did, back then.”