Market Research Participant Recruitment Agency
Today I sit at my desk, in my office, in my home. Not because we’ve all been sent home to work because of the Coronavirus, but because this is where I sit every working day.
It seems much more common now than when I started home working 10 years ago. Back then I was always nervous about telling clients I wasn’t sat in an office in central London, worried that in some way it would make me a fraud. Flexible working has increased since then and a lot more workers are spending some time in the week working from home, people seem more accepting.
Is there still the perception by some that “working from home” means sat on the sofa in my PJs watching a boxset whilst occasionally firing off the odd email? If so, it couldn’t be further from the truth. OK, I don’t have to dress smart but I do actually get dressed. I don’t sit on the sofa, I have an office and I don’t have the TV on but I do occasionally listen to the sound of my youth with Absolute Radio 90s streaming from the radio. I’m disciplined, I go into my office at 9am and I always try to leave at 5pm.
Whilst home working is seen as flexible, most of my clients are working between these hours and expect me to be available too, it makes sense to stick to those hours. This doesn’t mean I can’t chuck a quick load of washing in the machine, or take delivery of my food shop, some of the pros of working from home. There are downsides too though. If I’m ill you can usually still find me at the end of my laptop, I’m not good at just walking away. I rarely take an actual proper lunch break. I’m not active enough. The ‘commute’ to my office is pretty short, I try and get out for a walk in the morning before work, but I’m very good at making excuses not to do it. I’m on first name terms with the local delivery driver, he knows I’m in and I now seem to be the drop off centre for parcels for all the neighbours.
I have everything I need to work from home. I have access to all our IT systems and as a team we have video meetings twice a week We’re all in constant contact over Slack where the conversation is not always work related. I don’t feel lonely, I don’t get to have those chats with colleagues over the water cooler or whilst making a cuppa but that doesn’t mean we can’t take 5 mins to have a group chat about what everyone thought about the end of Killing Eve. The one thing I actually do miss with home working is come 5pm on a Friday, after a particularly tough week, I can’t turn to my colleagues and suggest we all head to the nearest hostelry to put the week to bed over a G&T. Just sometimes it would be nice to do that in the real world.
