These days, remote work is highly popular. Here are some pointers for discussing working from home with your management going forward.
Do you wish to request a remote job? That is not unexpected. With the web ushering in an era of flexibility that many workers are just unwilling to part with, remote work has emerged as one of the most sought-after benefits for employees in the modern day.
Unfortunately, some workers feel excluded when it comes to work-life balance because of overly strict return-to-office requirements. This has resulted in several ramifications for both managers and employees, underscoring the importance of remote work in the corporate realm.
With the help of this step-by-step approach, you’ll be able to ask to work from home and make your manager urge you to give up your commute in favor of working remotely.
Here are the steps to ask to work from home:
- Make Sure Remote Work Is Right for You
- Create a List of Potential Remote Work Benefits
- Speak in Person With Your Manager
- Suggest a Trial Period for Remote Work
- Collect Productivity Data During Trial
- Turned Down? Apply to Remote Jobs Now
1. Make Sure Remote Work Is Right for You
For those who have never worked from home, it may seem like a fantasy. You can avoid the daily commute, work in comfortable attire, sleep in, and overall have a more flexible schedule to fit in with your non-work activities.
However, not everyone is suited for remote work. Before choosing, you should think about a few potential dangers.
To begin with, working alone all the time could make you feel more alone and cut off from the workplace culture of the organization you’ve grown accustomed to. There are no coworkers to joke around with or happy hours to unwind from a demanding workweek while you work from home.
Furthermore, you may find yourself in problems if you are unable to communicate properly during video meetings. Video conferencing systems such as Zoom and Google Meet play a major part in enabling remote work. This means that, depending on your function, you may spend the entire day in back-to-back video meetings to stay in contact with your colleagues.
There are further drawbacks to working remotely, such as higher utility bills, fewer manager input, and a fuzzier distinction between work and personal life. Put simply, after completing all the procedures to set up your work-from-home life, it will be rather embarrassing to go back to the workplace. Therefore, be sure that none of these concerns are deal-breakers for your daily life.
2. Create a List of Potential Remote Work Benefits
Making the case for working from home is the next step if you’re certain that remote work is what you desire. We assure you that you should not enter that conversation unprepared, especially since many CEOs are adamant about getting staff back into the office.
Fortunately, there is a ton of proof that remote work is advantageous for both employers and individuals. Here are some useful statistics on working from home that can support your argument:
47% of companies report that workers who work remotely are more productive (Tech. co)
Compared to those who work in an office, employees who work from home had higher levels of optimism about their jobs (89%) In ADP
When compared to onsite workers, remote workers may have a 54% smaller carbon footprint (PNAS).
Companies that implemented a mixed work paradigm saw a 22% increase in performance (Stanford GSB).
Employers in the US can save $11,000 annually on average for each half-time remote worker. Reduced absenteeism and turnover, lower real estate expenses, and higher productivity are the main drivers of savings. (Analyzing Workplace Globally)
According to Forbes, 97% of workers say they don’t want to go back to work full-time.
Even though all of those figures are strongly persuading, we do not advise copying and pasting them into an email to your manager. Asking to work from home should ideally be done in a sincere, personable, and fact-based manner.
3. Speak in Person with Your Manager
It’s time to actually ask, and we want to stress this: We strongly advise that you speak with your manager in person if you wish to persuade them to allow you to work from home. You will want to hold a meeting at the office to begin the process, even though it may seem paradoxical given that the objective is to demonstrate that you can operate well outside of an office environment.
In actuality, asking for something in return is just more successful in face-to-face meetings. In fact, a study published in the Harvard Business Review discovered that requests made in person are 34 times more successful than those made via email.
The meeting should be quite simple after that. Be assured but courteous, forceful but composed, convincing but not strange about it. You’ll be working in your jammies in no time if you just stick to the facts and add a personal touch. The data is on your side.
Furthermore, even though it should be an in-person meeting, you should obtain written assurance that you will be working from home. You will want confirmation that this type of remote work arrangement will endure for more than a few weeks, after all.
4. Suggest a Trial Period for Remote Work
Everyone finds it difficult to commit, and this isn’t limited to romantic relationships. It usually takes some effort to persuade decision-makers that an idea as brilliant as the 4-day work week will benefit both companies and employees.
It is therefore advised that you request a trial period of working from home, in order to demonstrate to them not only that you are more productive working from home, but also that you can continue to be an integral part of the team even while working from home.
You might also recommend that you test the process with a hybrid work schedule, in which you spend some days in the office and others working from home if they’re hesitant to allow you to work completely remotely. This will allay their worries about your involvement in the corporate culture and grant you some autonomy.
5. Collect Productivity Data During Trial
It’s challenging enough to persuade your manager to allow you to work from home, but if you want to continue, the work still needs to be done. After all, now that you’ve achieved the pinnacle of work-life balance, you can just sit back and celebrate.
To ensure that your future work can be done remotely, you should gather as many productivity statistics as you can. This will help you persuade your team that working remotely is beneficial for both of you.
Should you require access to this type of information, your manager ought to be more than happy to oblige. If not, try your best to monitor it yourself and provide the results if you’re ever questioned about how productive you are working from home.
6. Turned Down? Apply to Remote Jobs Now
Thus, it was not successful for you. Working from home in your current job isn’t going to happen, for whatever reason—your employer is adamant about their in-office policy, or you’re just too important to the company culture to miss even a single day of work with your colleagues.
We have some good news if you’re among the vast majority of employees who would prefer to resign than go back to work. Even while return-to-office policy modifications frequently make headlines, many jobs still employ remote workers as if it were early 2020.
Here’s a list of companies with remote work jobs that are hiring now:
- Microsoft
- Airbnb
- Disney
- Slack
- Spotify
- Dropbox
- Uber
- Dell
It’s fine if you desire a remote working job with no qualifications. There are numerous jobs that will train and onboard new candidates who are eager to work from home, such as content writers, data entry professionals, translators, virtual assistants, and many more.
