Downside of Home Based Employment

It’s true that working from home offers lots of perks. There are no meetings, no commute, no boss and you can work as you please. However, many people forget the cons of working at home that inevitably exist when home and office merge.

To begin, the cons of working at home are both economically and socially related. Financially, the pressures of payment can become an issue. Because most home offices or work at home situations are freelance or self-run businesses, there is an added responsibility in needing to work when you transition to the home office. At the end of a traditional workweek regardless of vacation or sick time, you still receive a paycheck. When you run your own business, however, if you don’t work, or don’t work enough – you simply don’t get paid. Some people think they can handle the pressures of work scenarios like this, just to find that later on, that the financial security in knowing when the next paycheck will arrive is worth the hours spent away from home.

This is an excellent example of how the un-foreseeable pressures of working from home can quickly turn into the cons of working at home. Pressures such as these can quickly turn a dream scenario into one that is less than desirable.

While financial pressures can certainly affect a work-from-home scenario, some of the social implications of working from home can be rather burdening as well. Interruptions while you’re working from home can include almost anything. Personal phone calls, interruptions from kids, pressing errands, deliveries, tending to the house itself and even simple distractions like the television and Internet. All of these potential factors in your work environment (and certainly those you cannot foresee) can easily prevent you from completing important work. Thus, time management skills and diligent work ethic become very important for those who work from home.

Aside from pesky interruptions that turn productive days into fruitless hours, there are other social aspects that could be considered prevalent cons of working at home. Perhaps one of the largest areas people struggle with is in the overwhelming nature of the home and work atmosphere when the two areas of your life merge. When you work from home, it can easily feel like you are working or at the office 24 hours a day. Without the separation of a different location between work and home identifying work time and office time can be difficult. The feeling of always being able to work because you are essentially always at work is hard for some people.

Additionally, while working from home might mean you don’t have to attend pesky meetings or deal with a difficult boss, it also means a less social atmosphere. Because most work from home scenarios are independent many people who work from home comment on feelings of isolation and loneliness due to the less social atmosphere working from home lends itself towards.

While these cons of working at home are certainly prevalent, being aware of how they might affect you when you are working from home is one step toward combating these popular issues. For the most part people consider working from home as a fun way to earn a living, but it does also mean embracing and understanding some of the inevitable downsides to the job.