Now Is Your Time - To Prove Just How Effective You Can Be Working From Home

​In the midst of all the uncertainty, fear and confusion going on right now in the world, it is important to hold onto the things that are within your control and and focus on what you can do right now to lift yourself up and look forward to a brighter and better future.
You’ve always wanted to be able to work from home or work remotely right?  But most organizations have been very resistant to allowing remote work because remote workers are viewed as less productive or lazy or just taking a vacation and pretending to work (translation “If we can't see you and look over your shoulder, we don’t trust you to be responsible”).

But now all the rules have suddenly changed.  No, this isn’t the way that I or anyone would have ever wanted it to be, but since we are forced to be in this situation anyway, why not use this opportunity (if we can call it that) to prove that working remotely from home really does work and it works very well.  

Now that many of us are participating in this mandatory study of the effects for working remotely, the data is showing that people are actually more productive and effective in producing more work and engaging in more working hours during the day versus commuting into the office or work location each day.  In fact, recent data shows people are 55-70% more productive in terms of work output per day now that they are working remotely.  The apparent reasons for this are many, including the following:

• No time spent commuting to and from work. This includes reduced stress of driving in heavy traffic and/or mass transit delays,, in addition to time saved. This could add up to 2 or more hours per day that can now be used for productive work time.
• Fewer distractions from “informal meetings” (people popping into your workspace, conversations in the break room, Hallway conversations and getting pulled into meetings by chance encounters).
• Increased flexibility lets you work when you are most productive and maximizes greatest results in least time.
• Greater freedom of time enables proper balancing of work and personal/family time leading to less stress, greater focus when at work and increased loyalty of employees to the organization that is supportive of their efforts.

Now is the time to keep this momentum moving forward.  We have all the tools we need to be able to connect and collaborate remotely and we can make this work, now and into the future as needed.  This time and situation will pass but let’s hold onto all the valuable lessons learned.Bottom line is that this is really working and now there is real data to back this up. And answer all the doubters out there.  Working from home is real work and gets real results, sop let’s not go back to looking down upon those who desire to work remotely, they are very valuable contributors and need to be supported.

Look for more articles on how to maximize efficiency working remotely, what tools work well for remote work and more to come...