Parenting in Sussex: The pros and cons of being a home worker
There’s been a lot of news stories lately about home working versus office working.
More and more companies seem to be backtracking on letting their employees be home workers, instead calling them back into the office for an increasing number of days.
The thought process, I would imagine, is that firms believe their staff are less productive at home, presumably not trusting they are getting on with the job they’re employed to do (even though they were all for home-working when it kept their companies running during Covid...).
Next month, I will have been a home worker for five years, coinciding with the fifth anniversary of the first national lockdown.
It wasn’t a position I ever thought I’d find myself in, but despite having no initial warning it was going to happen, I have come to embrace it in the years that have ensued.
Working at home allows a flexibility that’s more difficult in the office. I can start earlier and finish later at home, without fearing lone working in a dark office block or having to worry about dashing off to pick my children up from after-school club at a set time.
I can also be at home to accept the daily Amazon packages that have become the norm for many a post-Covid household. And when you’re having building work done (as we have done a couple of times over the last few years), I can be around to make builders’ tea (always strong, always with sugar – I think it must be the law!) and let them in and out of the house.
There are definite downsides, though, most notably the lack of human connection. I miss being in an office with my colleagues and sharing ideas more freely (and the odd bit of banter). Yes, we have daily calls to chat through future plans and share what we’re working on, but I think you do miss something in only chatting at prescribed times. Spontaneity is harder to come by when you’re all in different parts of the town and county.
As with everything, home working has its pros and cons, but for the most part I really do choose to see the pros. That is until the school holidays, when all bets are off.
Gone is my silent workplace, replaced with a distant chorus of family life. It’s not distracting – my teacher husband is also off work and manages the chaos in the other room pretty well – but it is a constant reminder that I’m the only one in the house not on my holidays. The FOMO is usually very real.
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Within the next couple of months, I should have an office upstairs. But for now, I’m working at the kitchen table. Which means the kitchen is my office. But to my family, it’s just the place where they cook and eat, so they’re happy to leave cups and plates around with reckless abandon.
No amount of cries of ‘you’re leaving your dirty dishes in my office’ seems to perturb them, and so I spend the holidays working in what often looks like the behind-the-scenes part of a restaurant. Not ideal, but I guess it’s become a compromise I’ve learned to live with.
Had you told me in 2019 that it would be my last year spent with my team in an office environment I’d have probably thought you were mad. It just goes to show how quickly things can change.
Five years on, I’ve definitely made the best of my new way of working. If we could just minimise the influx of crockery, that would be wonderful...