In the past decade work from home has increased steadily, becoming now one of the “must have” when seeking for a new job opportunity. This report from the Bureau of labor statistics, shows that in USA there was a 5% increase in people telecommuting from 2013 to 2015. Reaching a peak of 25% (Full report here)

This trend is powered by the fact that both the employer and the employee gain from the use of it.
Few years ago, it would have been very hard to convince your board members that working from home, would have increased productivity, because there was a layer of doubt across managers to accept that having an employee sit in his own home would have ever been beneficial for them.
But luckily, thanks to big companies such as google, amazon and Apple that have driven this trend, and tons of statistics and success stream produced by remote workers it is becoming steadily easier to convince your company to allow to work from home.

The good stuff

There are plenty of resources from around the internet to convince you or your employer to swift toward working from home.
For personal experience the main advantages for both employer and employees to offer work from home are:

Employer advantages

• Save money on office spaces
• Allow to employ people from all over the world
• Increase people morale and productivity
• It make the company more appealing to employee
• Statistically proven that employee work longer and harder

Employee advantages

• No need to commute
• Save of travel expenses
• More relaxed due to familiar environment
• Allow to seek for job from all over the world

The bad stuff

Even if work from home is a fantastic trend, there are some part of it that can really affect you, either if you are the company owner of an employee.
I have personally experienced a small degree of work from home and I have noticed that not all grass is green.
work from home is very good on the tin, but it comes with its own disadvantages and these are:

Employer disadvantages

• Extra set up/ software needed for work from home
• Need good organisation with inventory, because scattered accross the globe
• Employees could be on different timezone and this can affect the business
• It is not easy to transition to remote working when you are using to deal face to face

Employee disadvantages

• You may inadvertently work too much
• Hard to switch off because work and life environment is the same
• Different timezone may affect you (eg. company meeting)
• Lack of socialisation
• It is not easy to transition to remote working when you are using to deal face to face

Conclusion

I personally think that is not easy to transition to work remotely, and I also believe that is not something that may actually suit everyone’s needs. Telecommuting, surely has its own advantages and can be very useful in some circumstances (eg, for people working in very remote areas or very focused individuals), but I am very sceptical that working in your own house is actually going to be the norm across the industry.

A tangible example to show how difficult could actually be to adopt this trend, has recently been announced by IBM, that even if it was one of the early adopter to offer its employees the ability to work from home, has now started to move all its workforce back into offices, as shown by this report of the newsobserver. 

I had the ability to do remote working, but unfortunately, I really missed the face to face, the chat in the kitchen, hearing people conversation and start a office wide discussion.

Nowadays, software like Microsoft Teams and Slack are facilitating the transition offering great communication and visual features, but I personally think it is still not enough.