on trend magazine issue 4 | Page 77

Is Working From Home Right For You? Several decades ago the “classified advertisement” section of newspapers contained advertisements attempting to recruit people to work from home, part time, stuffing envelopes to earn large sums of money. Articles also appeared warning people that these jobs really did not exist, and if they did exist they would not pay much money. Advertisements to work from home were often misleading. Within the past few decades this has all changed. With the advent of the high speed internet, rising real estate costs, globalization, expense reduction initiatives, initiatives to reduce the carbon footprint and competition to hire talented professionals, businesses started to promote working from home and home became a legitimate workplace. Today, working from home is on trend! Working from home does have different meanings to different people. For example to some people working from home means: An opportunity to occasionally stay home due to illness, family illness, having a service or delivery at home, car repairs, medical or parent teacher visits scheduled during the work day. Scheduling one or two days a week to work without the usual interruptions at work for either personal convenience or to work on major projects without the usual interruptions at an office. Having no assigned office space other than one’s home. Employers may have an assigned drop in space with a few desks, telephone and internet connections for all of their work at home employees to share. There are also some independent business p