One of the main reasons that people work from home is the opportunity to strike a better balance between work and home life. The key to this balance is managing time. Home-based employees often have additional time for their personal lives without a commute. Home office workers also typically have fewer work interruptions than employees in an office environment, allowing for more productive work time. Even with more available time at home and quiet time for work production, finding the right work/home time balance is surprisingly tricky.
When you telework, your personal and work lives center around your home. I am generally at home all day unless traveling for work or meeting with clients. This is great because I have large blocks of uninterrupted time to focus on work, which is ideal since my work typically involves writing, numbers analysis, and phone calls/videoconferencing.
Finding Boundaries
Studies have shown that in a typical office setting, employees only get 3 to 5 hours of productive work accomplished during a regular business day. Therefore, one of the ways to strike a better balance between work and home is to take advantage of the uninterrupted time to accomplish more work during business hours so that work does not spill over into the evening. I am often amazed at how much work an employee can get done from home during an average day.
You might assume that home office employees work fewer hours because they can be more productive during a workday, and my experience at Fentress Incorporated over the last 25 years has shown that this is not true. One of the challenges in striking a work/home balance is that when you work from home, your work is always there waiting for you. Thus, I find that employees often work more hours in home offices because the line between home and work becomes blurred.
To help strive for a better balance, one of the things we encourage at Fentress is to set up boundaries. A sample of such boundaries includes:
- Working from a dedicated room located in a quiet section of the home
- Having a phone, computer, printer, and other supplies that are dedicated to work
- Setting up and maintaining consistent office hours
Once these boundaries are in place, it is easier to establish and maintain a balance between work time and home time.
Commuting Less
One of the most significant aspects of working at home is the lack of a commute, an excellent advantage for saving time.
Many of our employees utilize this extra time to follow fitness routines, spend more time with family, or get involved in community organizations. However, when an employee leaves work and drives home from a typical office situation, the drive often helps the employee decompress from the workday and transition to home life.
Of course, the commute can be stressful with traffic and weather, but I have met many people who desire this transition time before coming home. When you work from a home office, you must switch gears from work to home instantly. If you have an active home life, opening the office door and entering the rest of the house can be quite a jolt at the end of a long workday.
Work and Life Interruptions
Another part of the balance is that when the work/home pendulum decidedly swings more toward one side or the other, the overlap is often more manageable in a home office than in a traditional office setting. Unanticipated interruptions in our personal lives impact everyone at work occasionally.
Such interruptions range from having a broken household appliance to picking up a sick child from school. When you work in a typical office, you usually have to take time off work to address such issues. When you work from home, you are already there to let in the repairman or quickly pick up the sick child.
The other day I was at work when I received a call from my wife. She had been at a doctor’s appointment, and her wait time was longer than usual. She called to ask me to pick up the kids from school. Because I work from home, stopping work and picking up the kids was not a great inconvenience. Just as I settled back down at my desk to start work, my wife called again to say she had accidentally locked the keys in the car. Once again, I jumped from the desk and drove to bring her a legend.
My wife was obviously having a bad day, but her day would have been much worse if I was not at home and available to help. I lost over an hour of work between the two interruptions, but if I had to commute to an office, I would have needed to take off half a day, or I may not have been as available to help.
When the pendulum swings towards work in situations where long hours are required to complete a project, it is often possible to minimize the impact on home life when working from home. Several years ago, I was working on a demanding task that required long hours. I came into work early, left late, and even had to cancel summer vacation plans. During this period, I worked an average of 75 hours a week. Even while working this many hours, I could still eat dinner with my family and read to my kids at night, a benefit I did not fully appreciate.
Balancing it All Out
So, what is the work/home balance? I think everyone defines this balance differently. Working from home allows me to spend more time with my family, attend sporting and school events, and be there for the occasional crisis, like a sick child or flooded basement, without sacrificing much of my workday.
On the work side, balance means being productive and achieving my daily to-do list more often than not. It also means striving to be a respected professional while working in the comfort of my home. Working from home helps me allocate my time more effectively and helps prevent burnout at work.
The little things, like spending 10 minutes with the kids when they come home from school or taking a break at lunch to throw balls with the dogs, help me appreciate the incredible opportunity I have to work from home.
