Why the office isn’t so bad after all

For most of us, the arrival of September means the end of the summer holidays; the kids are going back to school and travel plans have been put behind us for another year. While the shock of all this might make you think about working from home, there are a few reasons the office environment is actually good for us.

Social interaction Working from home means you’d miss interacting with your colleagues in a candid manner. Who will laugh at your witty banter if you’re home alone? Not to mention telecommuting comes with its distractions. Reruns of Come Dine With Me are possibly more tempting than booking your boss’s flight for next week’s meeting in Paris.

Getting it done in work time With all of those pesky distractions at home, you might find yourself actually working more hours than you would’ve done in the office. If a run to the shops keeps you an hour during the day, you can make it up in the evening, right? Going to the office means you do your work during office hours and leave it there when you go home.

Visibility Even if you get your head in the game and complete loads of extra work while you’re at home, there’s no better way to impress the boss than by being in his line of sight at some point during the day. Bragging about fixing a problem just doesn’t have the same effect over email.

Tech availability It’s true that technology has made it much easier to work from just about anywhere, allowing you to access systems remotely and participate in video conferences. However, that also means it’s harder to escape work by staying home. Not to mention it’s more difficult to read body language over a video link.

Nobody actually does it We’ve reported in the past that better internet means remote working is on the rise. That may be the case, but the Work Foundation finds that in actuality, only 1.6% of the UK’s workforce usually work from home and 19% say they sometimes do so.

Read the original article from the BBC at bbc.co.uk/news/business-34004804