Exciting news today – I’ve been granted the ok to work from home for some of my week.
This resolves one of my biggest fears about the move to Brighton – making the commute work and still having some time with my wife and daughter during the week.
This is a major coup for me, especially as my role is a management role. My firm is only beginning to embrace the concept of working from home as a healthy positive thing, but even then just for hands-on staff, who are – how do I say this – producing output more tangible and measurable than managers.
Most of my staff and clients are in a remote location to me, so my role is perfectly suited to home working – but I can tell some people are still sceptical about the whole concept of remote working.
Even though I clearly do spend a huge amount of my day on the phone and email, it still was a huge breakthrough to get this agreed. There is still something about so-called ‘information age’ companies that is grounded in the industrial age. People like to see staff at their desks between certain hours, want to see them looking like they are working hard and perhaps breaking out in the odd sweat. It gives us a visual reassurance that work is being done – the reality is it’s all happening in our brains, so location and sweat are really an irrelevance.
People have been congratulating me at work – news travels fast on the grapevine. I get the feeling there are a lot of other managers in my organisation who really want to do the same – so in that respect I feel like a trailblazer – I owe it to all of them to create the right impression of working remotely so that others get to do it after.
The one thing I do feel conscious of is developing my career further – I don’t plan to work days at home forever, neither do I plan this to be my last rung of the career ladder. I’ll have to max my time in the office and network like crazy – make people aware I still exist and want to progress.
It’s exciting to have achieved this agreement, as I can now look forward to a much more manageable commute and evenings with my daughter for at least some of the week. I will just need to ensure I make my time in the office count even more and ensure ‘out of sight’ is not ‘out of mind’.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Good on you Graham this is indeed great news and I’m sure it will work fantastically well for you. I live in Sydney now but originally lived in Brighton, so I’m all too familiar with your commute. I remember standing on a crispy Preston Park station in winter at 8.20am ‘in the dark’ and of course returning home 6.30pm-ish also ‘in the dark’. Not seeing Brighton in the daylight all week, I found really disconcerting. I felt ‘left out’, excluded from Brighton life. This occasionally would then lead me to feel quite lonely and miserable. I’m lucky enough now to work from home every day and therefore see my children all the time, except while they are at school of course. I’m very thankful for this, although school holidays can, and often sometimes do prove a bit of a challenge… but that’s another post.
Thank you for your encouraging words Steve! 8.30am to 6.30pm doesn’t sound too bad at all – my day when commuting looks like it will be more like 6.30am train and arriving back at 7-7.30pm! Still, that’s why working from home two days a week will make such a difference.
Sounds like you definitely progressed your career and life even while commuting – and moved on to an even better arrangement. I’m sure that must make for an interesting story.