If I had a printer/scanner and a landline, I could do almost all of it at home. But for the most part nobody does it at my office and we're fine with that.
On its face, 95%+. I'd only have to go to our warehouse to audit physical inventory once/month, and I could probably drop that to once/quarter.
On a practical level though, it's hard to be effective when I'm out of the office. Maybe I just work with a bunch of dumb assholes (which I sometimes think is the case), but email and even phone calls pale in comparison to face to face communication. I was just saying this the other day, that its usually not worth my time to write an email more than two sentences because people will not read it, or won't comprehend enough of it.
It's really too bad for our health and that of the planet that people are so stupid.
I was a social worker so I need to be face-to-face, but paperwork would totally be better done at home because interruptions are time killers.
My H on the other hand would be so much better off probably doing at least 50% of his work from home. He works 12 hour days because he spends 6 hours dealing with office BS and doesn't really get to his work until everyone else leaves. He bought his team noise-cancellation headphones because they all distract one another....obviously they could be working on their own at those times.
I absolutely agree with you that telecommuting makes so much more sense in a lot of cases. But at least in H's field, the old school bankers are not down for that, if for no other reason than they aren't used to it. It would make even more sense to work from home considering people having to stay late to coordinate time zones between Singapore, London and NYC.
I could probably do just about all of it. But I would be really bored, and I'm pretty sure the bond among my department wouldn't be as strong as it is now. Sure, we'd communicate as much as we needed to via skype and IM, and all. But the more personal conversations we have over lunch would be drastically reduced. Some would argue that's a good thing, though!
Ideally, I'd love two days at home, three in the office.
100% of it. I'm a Director of Sales for a software company and my reps, as well as almost all of the sales staff, work out of their homes as well. We use WebEx for meetings and everyone is well versed in what has to happen in order to be productive in a WAH environment. One of the good things is that we are all used to working wherever we are at any given moment so we don't get a lot of "I can't call you back until I get back to the office." It can be very efficient.
Post by downtoearth on Oct 28, 2013 15:25:54 GMT -5
About 90% of my job I could do from home. It's only scanning and printing that I can't do at home, but that could easily be fixed. I can even forward my work phone and make calls from my cell and our company phone service makes it look like it comes from my office number on called ID.
I probably do about 15% of my job from home b/c my work prefers that we are in the office. However, on days with sick kids or when I'm not feeling well, I can usually still bill most of my time and work from home.
Post by penguingrrl on Oct 28, 2013 15:29:20 GMT -5
My former museum job, 0% since it was all public interaction. While pregnant with Julia I did some work from home for my mom's friend's company, but I was lousy at it. I had a really hard time buckling down and working and was constantly distracted by stuff that needed to be done around the house.
DH can do the bulk of his work from home and usually does so at least twice a week, but some of those days he ends up at the library because the kids are too distracting.
I spend about 17 hours/week at work. If I did virtual office hours and taught online courses, I could probably spend all but a couple of hours a week at home.
100% but it would be harder and slower at home. My setup here is pretty sweet. I'd probably need to buy a new computer to really do it better at home.
We are constantly bugging each other with little questions and factoids and whatever else. We do have an IM system but still it's harder to replicate that at the same pace that you can in person.
There are also a lot of "informal meetings" in our cube aisles where a lot of important political info gets told that people don't wanna repeat or write down. So really you do miss a lot when you aren't here to jump into conversations.
I can telecommute, however, if I need to. 2 other people on my team do it. Many people here work FT from a distance.
Probably about 60%. I am an Executive Assistant where I could easily do most of my work (set up meetings, conference calls, calendaring, word processing, etc.) at home. However, how much I WOULD get done, well that is a different story. ;-)
30-40% of my job is paperwork that could be done at home. The other 60% of the time is spent with students, colleagues, and parents so I need to be at work. My position will never get the option to work at home because of the politics of the field. It's perfectly ok for me to spend a day at the board of education in an office, far removed from students and teachers, doing paperwork and answering emails. But if I spent that day on my couch doing the exact same thing, all hell would break loose.
Maybe 30%. I manage staff whose jobs would be impossible to do at home (though maybe that will change in the distant future), so I need to be there most of the time to effectively manage them and the department. But I also do quite a bit of administrative work that can be done at home.
This. I would prefer being able to work from home 1-2 days a week but my company is way too old school for that.
Not much. I need to be in the lab most if the time. Even if I could, I wouldn't. I need the extra social interaction and to actually get out of the house to keep my anxiety and depression manageable. If I spend too much time at home I kind of retreat from really and it gets difficult for me to interact with people.
Post by sillygoosegirl on Oct 28, 2013 20:18:16 GMT -5
I worked from home 3 weeks per month for a while. I enjoyed not commuting, and I think I was probably more productive than I'd been in the office, but it was surprisingly lonely. Maybe if I had a cat it would be better...
About 99%. I'm counting down the days until I go back to 99%. I have no idea why I'm sitting in a cube farm for most of the day as I'm 10 feet from people and using IM/email anyway. The couple of days I get at home makes this tolerable.
And I'm the opposite, I'd go nuts if I had to work from home, because the socialization with my coworkers keep me sane. And GBCN free during the day. I'm happier having pretty much kicked this habit.