Five Common Bad Arguments Against Working From Home

I’ve worked from home for almost 20 years. Working from home has its drawbacks, but for me, the benefits of being able to work from home are much greater. I don’t have to deal with traffic or follow a strict dress code.

Because of those two benefits alone, I’ve saved a lot of money over the past 20 years. I’ve put that money towards paying off debts. This improved my credit and allowed me to buy my first house five years ago. I truly believe many more people could work from home if they chose to.

Many companies make arguments against working from home, and a lot of them are bad ones. Here, I’ll discuss the most common bad arguments against working from home and provide some ideas companies can use to make working from home possible for their employees.

You need a “water cooler” for culture

This argument is partly true — relationships with employees that aren’t 100% work-based are important for company culture. But you can reproduce this in a work-from-home or remote work environment by using apps like Slack.

People are more productive in an office

This is not 100% true. Everyone has their own work style. Some people work better in an office setting with more supervision, while others work better with little or no supervision. If you work better in an office, a lot of cities have started building remote working spaces.

You need an office for work/life separation.

This is also partly true. Thinking about work all the time isn’t good for your health or your relationships with others.

You can create work-life separation when working from home, or remotely. As mentioned previously, if you work better outside the home, check out a remote working space. If you work ok inside your home, shut your door and let others know that when your door is shut, you’re not to be disturbed except in an emergency

At the end of the day, turn off e-mail notifications so you don’t have to hear when new work messages come in.

It adds to your company’s valuation

Startups who are trying to build their valuation can do this better by taking on more customers, creating more revenue, and growing their company, not by having a co-located team.

Instead of focusing on having a co-located team, find ways to make your business successful and figure out if you can do it better with a remote team or a co-located team.

It makes meetings easier.

People often monopolize meetings with trivial questions because they don’t want to make a difficult decision on their own. When meetings are necessary, there are a lot of tools you can use to have remote meetings. These include Google Hangouts and Zoom.

There are too many distractions at home.

This isn’t entirely untrue. But if you trust your employees, then this shouldn’t be an issue. If you measure your employees by the work they get done, rather than the amount of time they spend on it, they’ll be more engaged because they know their performance is being measured by the quality of the work they put out.

How to make working from home possible for your employees.

Find ways to keep your employees focused when they are working.

There are a lot of apps employees can use to stay focused, such as FocusMe, Forest, Freedom, and Serene. Look at these apps and see which ones might be suitable for your employees.

Find ways to keep them accountable.

You could have occasional conference calls with your company as a whole, or with individual employees, depending on how big your company is.

You could also use email and apps like Trello or Asana to manage the different projects your employees are working on.

If they make a lot of calls to customers or potential customers, use apps like Twilio or Genesys.

You can use these apps to monitor calls and make sure your employees are completing them the way they should.

Be understanding when your employees have technical problems.

Sometimes Internet services don’t work properly, or the electricity might go out where your employee lives.

These are the most common arguments people make against remote work. There are many others. When deciding whether you should let your employees work from home, consider what kind of work they’re doing, whether they can do it from home easily, and the necessary modifications to make remote work possible for your employees.