Document Type
Conference Paper
Rights
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence
Disciplines
Social issues, Family studies, Social sciences
Abstract
Flexible work options can be considered a benefit for many people. One type of flexible work option is working from home. Many businesses do provide some form of flexibility for mothers and parents working outside the home but this is influenced by culture and geographic location e.g. Pakistan is slow to embrace working from home policies while in western cultures or in more developed states, there are people who advocate that work from home policies should become the norm. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how working from home can be optimally managed to achieve greater work/ home harmony.
However there are challenges for management in adopting a work from home policy. Critics assert that employees who are not office-based are "actually not working". The challenge is the traditional management mindset which is control focused believing employees have to be in view for productivity reasons. The following are challenges of working from home -The difficulty in separating home from work -Self- imposed pressure of working endlessly and -The feeling of being alienated from companies’ major decisions and sometimes promotions.
Even though teleworkers can generally develop strategies that align boundaries to their preferences for segmentation or integration, employees with greater job autonomy and control are better able to do so. However, teleworkers in organizations with “always on " cultures may experience greater challenges here. When work and home activities take place in the same physical space, physical, temporal and psychological boundaries between work and home can become blurred.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21427/kk4b-e646
Recommended Citation
Farrell, K. (2017) Working from Home: A Double-Edged Sword, Home Renaissance Foundation Conference 16-17 November, London. doi.org/10.21427/kk4b-e646
Publication Details
4th (HRF) Home Renaissance Foundation Conference 2017 | A Home: a place of growth, care and wellbeing ... 4th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on 16-17 November in London.