Do you work from home? Have you tried working from home and since returned to the office following relaxed health and safety restrictions during the pandemic?
Read my blog post and join the conversation about working from home versus working in the office and share your thoughts in the comments.
#MummyMonday: How has Work from Home changed since the Pandemic?
How has Work from Home changed since the Pandemic?
I have worked from home as a freelancer for the past twelve years, with a few casual part-time jobs outside of home at different times. I now have a part-time job working as a store assistant, but I still work from home with my book writing and blog writing career. It seemed that there was a wealth of possibility for working mothers that needed flexibility due to childcare when we began to explore the convenience of Zoom meetings, Microsoft Teams meetings and what could be achieved working from home when compared to working in the office. This is a challenge I have considered for a very long time, way before the Covid-19 pandemic, and I was pleased for the people that found their work and home life vastly improved with a more relaxed approach to the work habit.
My experience searching for work-from-home jobs
Having spent some time applying for more demanding jobs recently, I am noticing that the option to work from home seems to be diminishing, unless you are self-employed. If I apply for a job as a social media manager, for example, the job description invariably states that I would need to spend some time in the office with the possibility to work from home. Reading between the lines, I know that the flexibility I would require would most probably not be available. I have instead chosen to work a minimum wage job for which I am over-qualified, while continuing to chase the author dream, for which I receive no payment, simply so that I can work from home and be available to care for my children and my pets.
Now that my children are older and more independent the childcare is not so much of an issue. What I do struggle with is organising time off with them during school holidays, getting them to and from after-school clubs, being available at weekends when they need to see me and being available to attend medical appointments and parents' evening meetings. Fortunately, I can fit these easily around my part-time store assistant job, but what about all the other parents who experience a lot of personal stress trying to juggle work and domestic responsibilities?
Have we moved forward with attitudes to work?
Wouldn't you think that we have moved forward now, with new attitudes and better tools for working? Apparently not. The traditional nine-to-five office model still stands, but with added responsibility of constant emails via phone and tablet, endless demands on personal free time, and people feeling torn between progressing their career and being a good parent. I have observed all these behaviours from conversations with working people and stories I hear in the media.
What choices do you make?
Tell me, what choices do you make, or have you made between domestic responsibilities and professional obligations? You might not have childcare concerns, but our pets require a lot of attention and I think we need to address this when animal charities are struggling to cope with surrendered and abandoned pets. And then there are people who care for elderly family members that live at home but need supervision. Our lives are complicated. Why can't we fit work around family without all the stress?
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