There’s been a heap of hoopla surrounding the death of working from home at Yahoo, but let’s talk about the real reason everyone’s in a tizzy over an isolated company decision: Because being able to work from home is so awesome! It’s tough to drive buses from home, but there are plenty of opportunities to telecommute – sometimes all you have to do is ask. Here’s how one might go about convincing their boss to let them work from home.
Pssst – here’s more on the whole Yahoo circus, if you missed the show:
First, you might want to consider presenting your boss with a list of the companies that do allow for flexible work arrangements. The list is long and continuously growing. As a starting point, browse our gallery of family-friendly employers. Telecommuting and other alternate work arrangements are commonplace at many of Canada’s top employers. If your boss wants to be in with the in-crowd of trendy companies and organizations, this information might appeal to him or her.
Obviously, not every employer will be swayed by the fact that other companies let people work from home. Another strategy would be to appeal to your boss’s sense of reason. If you have legitimate reasons for wanting to be a remote work – say, a toddler at home or an ailing parent that needs constant care – your boss will likely be more easily persuaded to consider the option. If you’re a good employee and working remotely is the only way you’ll stick around for the long haul, your boss just might pull some strings to make it happen.
Rather than focusing on yourself and how you really want to get out of the office, you could also frame the request as a financial matter. If your company lets even a small percentage of its workers start telecommuting, it can probably cut down on the amount of office space it needs to lease.
A 2011 telecommuting study backed it up: according to the research by WORKshift Canada, if firms supported working from home just twice a week, it could produce a collective savings of more than $53 billion a year for the employee, company and community.
It also allows for people to start working on time even when the weather is bad, there’s horrible traffic, or when they have a sick kid at home. A remote worker might actually be more motivated because they feel they need to prove that they are by their computer and actively working.
The “interactions and experiences” that Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer thinks can only happen face-to-face can occur on the phone or on video chats, too. Is making a phone call or sending an e-mail really that difficult for people at Yahoo, or is it just tedious because they’re the only people still using Yahoo accounts?
More hands in the bucket are not necessarily better for speed or quality. If you’re a firefighter then, yes, please go to the office. But there are plenty of careers where working from home just makes sense.
