Published on 12, July, 2020
Hi,
Just out of curiosity, which job sectors do people currently work in, or have worked in, in the past?
I work in adult social care, specifically learning disabilities /ASC, after exploring numerous other sectors that turned out to be ill suited to my motivation, social and preferred working styles (theatre / film /tv, admin. temping, call centres (yuck !), harvest work).
I have a question to those who work from home.
Did you look for positions that offer working from home and got it immediately or later after started your jobs.
I am trying to get working from home from my employer and it is a battle. I would say a war.
They absolutely do not want to hear about that.
I am not surprised.
Working from home can cause lots of difficulties for employers. It tends to be a privilege, not an automatic right, and also needs to be something that a manager can withdraw at any time, without really needing to give a reason.
Have you framed the discussion in terms of monetary value to your employer, or have you focussed more on what you want to get out of it?
This makes no sense to me.
If this is something I want, I will be depressed and unhappy until I will get it.
And I will keep looking for that everywhere around until I will get it.
That's great -- in that case you should have no trouble finding what you're looking for.
I didn’t go looking for my first online/work from home job, it somehow found me, in the form of a former work colleague telling me about it (she also did it). It was marking course work for an online education establishment. I could work what ever hours I wanted and do as much or as little work as I wanted and it would work out at around £10 or so per hour, depending on how slow/quick I worked.
Write down, if you haven’t already, all the skills and qualities you have to offer and also any limitations. By looking at limitations you can turn them into strengths. It’s called a ‘SWOT’ analysis ~ you can find information about this online.
You can then build up a good picture of where your talents and gifts will be best suited and what type of work will be best suited to your individual needs and preferences. When you know all this, you can then devise a plan to bring it into reality. You’ll need some help with this. Autism Plus are working out really well for me, so if you don’t currently have the right support, maybe you could get in touch with them.
Oh, if working from home is something someone wants he will leave the company. Then they will need to spend time and resources to find a new person, to teach the new person.
In the UK already 4 200 000 people regularly work from home.
seekeraftertruth said:Employers may not necessarily care about this. One of the key tricks in negotiation is to find out why it would benefit the other person
Precisely.
California's employer probably now has him pegged as someone who is out for himself, rather than someone who is wholly committed to the company.
The harder he pushes now, the harder they'll push back. So to get what you want you have to play smarter and find another tack.
I am not trying to be nasty here, simply honest, having been on the company end of such discussions before.
Even if the employer wholly trusts California, they may be concerned about the risk of setting a precedent that would enable the less honest individuals in the department to demand "working" from home on the basis of equal treatment ("you let California do it, so why not us...?"). This is why the situation isn't black and white, and the employer typically needs the ability to pull the plug if world + dog start trying it on.
Although IT work can often be done anywhere, the most efficient means of communication is F2F. You can check your understanding in real-time and draw pictures on a real whiteboard beside your desks that will stay put for months if necessary. Many jobs now require cross-functional teams to work together, rather than each individual taking their own task to their cave to work on alone.
California said:If this is something I want, I will be depressed and unhappy until I will get it.
Employers may not necessarily care about this. One of the key tricks in negotiation is to find out why it would benefit the other person - it's much easier to let them convince themselves it's the right thing to do, rather than you trying to convince them. Simply put, if you can trust your employees to do the work at home, then they probably will, and you end up with more work done for the same cost, and the quality of work will be higher for those that work best on their own.
Of course, I'm coming from the viewpoint of being autistic, so this may not apply to "normal" people who require the social aspect as a fundamental part of getting the job done. If you need that social aspect as the glue to keeping the work running, then working from home can be isolating and counter-productive.
People in I.T. are stereotypically seen as being more antisocial than other professions, so I'm probably also biased towards that. If you work in a job that is more prized with having more affinity with computers than people, then working from home - providing they can still do the same work as when in the office, which we can - is a no-brainer.