These 4Cs Are Why Companies Don’t Want Work From Home Jobs

Many employers still are wary of offering work from home jobs. If you would like to work from home, here is what you will need to overcome

Try using the term ‘work from home‘ on Google and you will be cyber bombed with ads on every webpage that you click on next. When I quit my desk job three years ago to be with my husband who has a transferable job, I was told I could pursue my infotech passion with work from home. Three years on, I am yet to find a legitimate enterprise offering genuine employment. Even the big giants of IT industry are now discouraging this arrangement for their staff members.

One wonders why this is happening, when it offers such great advantages to business organisations.

Here are four key reasons why work from home jobs are still a problem for many employers.

Culture

Some companies feel that work from home challenges the basic ethos of work culture – Camaraderie. Interacting with colleagues or taking orders from the chieftain over phone, email or video calls fails to develop that common bond, group loyalty and team morale. The loss of interpersonal interaction cannot be substituted with any form of virtual communication gimmicks. Being engaged independently with a computer screen at home is in contrast to the pandemonium at office which also builds and bonds a special social relationship. A complex cultural difference may also creep in, in case the remote desk is located in some other country or the desk jockey is of a different nationality.

Continuity

Work from home jobs, unless legally contracted, can lead to continuity issues. A remote worker is always looking for bigger opportunities and may make the next switch sooner than can expect. The dependability of an employee is in question when he or she is at home. All it amounts to is changing one’s email ID and restarting with a new identity. This has serious implications for projects requiring employee continuity. The low retention quotient makes work from home a difficult choice for businesses and only menial data entry jobs are available on offer.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality of trade secrets is the basic principle of the commercial world. Business owners take extreme steps to safeguard trade secrets. Coca Cola’s secret recipe is kept in a vault and only the board of directors can open it. Despite so many security shields the confidentiality of the ingredients was stolen and almost sold to a rival. Confiding and trusting a remote worker with the company’s plans, formulas, programs, techniques, codes, or information is an inconvenient truth and worrisome. The long distance data link through an open domain with the remote employee makes the exchanges vulnerable to interception and cyber-attacks. The problem is multi-fold when the home based employee is required to handle financial transactions.

Competency

Remote workers often have low productivity and proficiency. There are a host of reasons – lack of seriousness, a lackadaisical attitude, chores at home, a wandering mind and most notably – there is no supervision. With all sorts of distractions at home, it’s no surprise that the employer is always concerned about your competency and productivity. You may be the most efficient go-getter, yet the smallest mistake will get attributed to your remoteness from the office. Even the unreliability of an internet connection at home contributes to your incompetency.

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All is not lost. You can beat the 4Cs 

• Start as a freelancer and offer to visit office premises of the employer at least once in a fortnight. It will marvellous if you can do it with some continuity.
• Maintain a social calendar of your colleagues and wish them on birthdays and anniversaries. It helps make the social connect.
• Plan a social get together with your co-workers once in a while.
• Don’t job jump too often. A steady profile would reinforce the employer’s confidence in you.
• Agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the employer or engage in work through reputed freelance websites only.
• Don’t let the temptation to engage in household matters overpower you. Keep a steady nine-to-five routine even at home.
• Work from a separate study room – never from the comforts of your bed.
• Exercise self-disciple and keep work and home separate.

Top image via Pixabay

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