The "Working from Home" line

[joedplumber]

Wow, I've never seen 'work from home' as a slack day. My spouse works from home when he can and it's a day of conference calls, answering emails and producing documents and it starts at 7am and usually ends at 6. The only difference is when the dogs bark, the associates hear it and he can get up and raid the frig.

Anyone who sees working from home as a chance to slack off are the very people who ruin it for those who don't.

I think "slacking off" is acceptable as long as your available, you meet your deadlines and get your work done. Most managers don't seem to care where or when the work got done.

 

[Magical2017]

I teach at a college. If I am not teaching a class, holding office hours, or doing student observations, I work from home. That is typically two days a week. If that means I spend all day re-watching episodes of GOT, then that also means I have to get the grading done in the wee hours of the morning--not fun. I usually grade and plan when my kids are in school, but I sometimes do the grocery shopping or make a doctors appointment and then grade after the kids are in bed. I do not have a Monday class so do have a three day weekend every week this semester. It changes from semester to semester. I love my schedule.

 

[lovesmurfs]

I work from home frequently (my commute is 2 hours each way into Chicago).

I think the days I work from home they actually get more time out from me because I don't get interrupted nearly as much. When I work from home, I forward my calls (Skype) to my cell -- when I answer, it's as though I'm at the office. VPN -- my email is as though I'm at the office as well. It's definitely not a "slack" day. I usually have specific goals for the day. I wake up early and work until the goals are accomplished.

I'm a firm believer in "you don't get paid for the time you put in; you get paid for the work you get done." If I have staff members who have projects they're working on, I let them work from home to get the project done. I do expect them to check email throughout the day.

 

[Magical2017]

I think the days I work from home they actually get more time out from me because I don't get interrupted nearly as much. /QUOTE]

This. No one comes by to "ask a quick question" aka stay and chat me up for half an hour.

 

[dhardawa]

I work from home almost every day. I have an office and work there just like I would in the office except I’m in my pajamas and go straight from my bed, up the stairs, and I’m at work!

 

[smokeyblue]

I think as much flexibility and "perks" a company can give their employees the better.

I can do 80% of my job from anywhere, but that 20% is usually peppered throughout the week, so it is unusual that I can work remotely. The good thing is when something has come up (snow day, ill parent), my company has let me work remotely.

 

[fla4fun]

We are currently in a temporary office while ours is being remodeled and our department is short a desk. My coworker who has the same job function and myself only overlap one day per week at work normally, so it was decided that we alternate working from home every other Tuesday. Personally I actually prefer to be in the office, but we’re making it work. I miss the collaboration of the team when working from home, and feel a little out of the loop. It does save some wear and tear on the car.

 

[Jennasis]

I work from home. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

[tvguy]

A few managers from time to time work from home. It would never work for the rest of us. Corporate IT forbids many of the pieces of equipment we need to work to be connected to the Internet for security reasons. So we have to be at work....to work.

 

[Skippy918]

I can work from home once a week and I really like it. I save an hour from not commuting plus another 30 because I don’t have to fix my hair or do my makeup. I do get a lot done and I can also throw in some laundry.

 

[Southernmiss]

Dh can work from home a few times a week. Doesn't do it every week. But it does come in handy like yesterday.

He started work at 6:30 am and officially logged off at 7:30 pm. He was home to wait on our garage door replacement and install. Guys were here for 4 hours. Dh was able to work while they were here. Dh's day is usually an 8 hour day, but he was home and the evening was quiet-dd snd I were away. So he worked until we got home.

Comes in handy for days like that.

 

[mousefan73]

Well I am working from home this Friday and only plan on doing 2 calls and that’s it. If anyone suspects I am slacking I will also ask them if Inwas slacking this past Sunday from 8pm-11pm to fight some work fires or that yesterday at home I sat on my butt for 10 hours? I have also worked while traveling for private things. It’s called being effecient and taking care so things get done iso wasting a vacation day.

We have flexibilty. I work officially 4 days ( 75% model) and 2 from home and 2 from office. We have a new office concept where you dont even have your own desk. We have 30 desks for 50 people. Between, meetings, vacay, biz travel, sickness, HO it works.

But it depends on the job. Half my calls are with colleagues at other sites anyways. And my boss would notice if I was slacking.

AND managers and collegues must understand that workplace Presence does not equal effeciency. In fact I do more while at home. Sure kids distract when they come home and I take an hour break. At work half my day is spent chatting and worhtless meetings.

 

[CarolAnn856]

It's a shame that attitudes like the thread title exist. Many people wrongly assume that anyone working from home isn't pulling their weight.

My husband works from home 1 or 2 days a week if he's not on travel and doesn't have meetings he has to be present in the office for. Instead of wasting 3 hours total commuting, he's spending that time, plus normal office hours, working.

I teach now, but for a while after I had kids I did part-time recruiting from home for an HR consultant. I worked hard at that. One benefit was having a somewhat flexible schedule, but I didn't work less or slack off just because I didn't go to an office.

 

[anniemae]

I think it depends on the job. I worked at a job where you could occasionally work from home but there would be no way you could go about having a fun day off and just check e-mails on the way to the beach. There were constant conference calls that required me to be at my computer constant calls, emails that had to be tended to immediately etc.

 

[Poohforyou]

My company has a pretty flexible work from home policy and I have definitely been that passenger in a car working while traveling. You can tell who does and does not abuse the policy here. As long as people meet their deadlines and are responsive when appropriate, I don't have an issue with it. Is there an opportunity for you to work from home?

This is how my company is. I've teleworked from all kinds of locations and typically put in more hours than if I were in the office.

 

[dominiondad]

This is interesting. In DC, when we have bad weather, the federal government sometimes gives certain employees the option to work from home. When that happens, local message boards are usually filled with rants from people in the private sector saying this is effectively nothing more than a day off for lazy government workers and that working from home means not working. It's interesting that doesn't seem to be the thought here. Wondering why.

FWIW, I support work from home programs, even though its not an option available to me.

 

[Christine]

This is interesting. In DC, when we have bad weather, the federal government sometimes gives certain employees the option to work from home. When that happens, local message boards are usually filled with rants from people in the private sector saying this is effectively nothing more than a day off for lazy government workers and that working from home means not working. It's interesting that doesn't seem to be the thought here. Wondering why.

FWIW, I support work from home programs, even though its not an option available to me.

Sour grapes I suppose? I'm a federal worker (used to be a private sector employee supporting the feds). As I stated up above, my telework requirements seem to be much more stringent than what people are relaying here with their experiences. I have a preapproval process, I'm required to provide my supervisor with a log in email and my work plan. I provide a log off/log on email for my lunch, and then a final log off email with a DETAILED list of everything I accomplished that day, who I talked to, subject matter, etc. Supervisor has to save that record for 3 years. With the exception of lunch or being on a conference call, if my supervisor emails or calls me, I have about 15 minutes to respond.

I'm sure not all agencies are that way and certainly we all hear about the government employee who is committing telework fraud, but I don't get the resentment and sour grapes attitude that people get when OPM denotes a telework day due to weather.

 

[Klayfish]

I work from home twice a week...I'm sitting in my home "office" as I type this. My WFH days are by no means a day off. However, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't more relaxing and I didn't spend any time doing anything other than my job. I don't feel the least bit bad about it. I put more hours in during my WFH days because my round trip commute goes from 120 miles to one flight of stairs. I set up my work schedule so that one of the two days I WHF is a "project" day. I focus on work projects that aren't things I do day in and day out. Sometimes I have more projects going than others. I'm always working, but sure I'll spend 5 minutes and go start a load of laundry, take the dogs for a walk, run the dishwasher, etc... I am a manager and my staff does WFH once or twice per week. I don't care if they do the same as I do. If they get their work done and are responsive to their customers, I'm fine with it.

Another nice thing is that since my normal commute is so long, I can work even longer while at home and still be done before I would normally get home. That leaves me extra time to help out with house work.

I'm starting to push for being able to WFH a third day. I definitely want to be in the office some, there is value to it. But I thoroughly enjoy WFH.

EDIT: I'll add that our WFH policy has allowed me to take such long trips to WDW over the past 4 summers too. We have taken 2+ week trips. Usually we drive down on a Thursday night. I'll WFH Fri, and the first half of the following week. Then use PTO the rest of that week and the following (often 4th of July falls in too). It's great. I definitely do work while we're there, but yes at lunch I will spend an hour at the pool with my family.

 

[clutter]

So I found out today at the office that there are certain people, not in my department, that work from home every Friday. I also heard that a few of them pretty much treat as if they have a 4 day work week. I was talking to one of the persons and they told me that "work from home" means two things

1) be available to field phone calls and emails
2) get your work done and don't miss deadlines

Some of them even use it as a long weekend and work from the passenger seat on a Friday while they travel to their vacation destination.

I'm actually not upset about this more than I am jealous. Anyone else have the same office policy or do you think this is just abuse?

We have strict work-from-home policies, which only apply to some of our staff. Which no one follows. But for some positions, it just doesn't make sense.

A few years back, we hired someone that immediately took a month long vacation for wedding/honeymoon, then came back to work to announce that she was moving to another coast and working remotely. She decided that the above pertained to her, although our company policies said otherwise. Lots of calls with her at the pool, or having to wait until after yoga to be available for a call. But that started many of our work-from-home employees to do the same. (Thankfully, we finally got rid of her - for cause, because she actually didn't do a good job when she deigned to work - but it took a long time, and the damage stayed behind.)

It is a huge problem now. Those in the office might need information from a work-from-home person, but can't get it on a timely basis. Or it takes 10 emails spread out over 3 days to resolve an issue that would take 10 minutes face to face. And those that work-from-home will ask for and/or provide information nights, weekends, vacations, and expect immediate turnaround. So now there's an imbalance in workloads. Those that work from home have flexibility during the week, and don't feel the need to work 40 hours if they get their work done. But those that are in the office 9-5 all week are now expected to be responsive off hours on top of the 40+ hour work week, so it is adding hours to in-office employees.

 

[Klayfish]

We have strict work-from-home policies, which only apply to some of our staff. Which no one follows. But for some positions, it just doesn't make sense.

A few years back, we hired someone that immediately took a month long vacation for wedding/honeymoon, then came back to work to announce that she was moving to another coast and working remotely. She decided that the above pertained to her, although our company policies said otherwise. Lots of calls with her at the pool, or having to wait until after yoga to be available for a call. But that started many of our work-from-home employees to do the same. (Thankfully, we finally got rid of her - for cause, because she actually didn't do a good job when she deigned to work - but it took a long time, and the damage stayed behind.)

It is a huge problem now. Those in the office might need information from a work-from-home person, but can't get it on a timely basis. Or it takes 10 emails spread out over 3 days to resolve an issue that would take 10 minutes face to face. And those that work-from-home will ask for and/or provide information nights, weekends, vacations, and expect immediate turnaround. So now there's an imbalance in workloads. Those that work from home have flexibility during the week, and don't feel the need to work 40 hours if they get their work done. But those that are in the office 9-5 all week are now expected to be responsive off hours on top of the 40+ hour work week, so it is adding hours to in-office employees.

That doesn't sound like an employee issue to me, it sounds like a leadership issue.