I am fortunate to have a job that allows me to work from home. By my job, I don’t mean writing for The Roarbots, which is a job in the same way that playing guitar in the subway is a job – only with less income. I’m talking about my regular 9 to 5. It’s an arrangement I have enjoyed, off and on, for over two decades, and in that time I have found that while various industries, companies, and supervisors all have different requirements when it comes to telecommuting, there are a few things that are universal.

First, an important point. Telecommuting is not freelancing.

When I say telecommuting, I’m talking about working for an employer, either as a contractor or a standard W2 employee, on a semiregular schedule, and usually as part of a team. If you are paid for your time, you are a telecommuter. If you are paid for a deliverable, you are a freelancer.

Aside from these initial requirements, occasional meetings, and subsequent status update calls, freelancers are, well, free. They work their own schedules, using whatever methods make them successful. If you are a writer who works best at 2 am in your underwear, third scotch in hand, and Nickelback blaring in your headphones, then you’re likely a freelancer, and these tips don’t apply to you. You also might be in need of professional help (for the Nickelback, not the scotch).

I’m just joking. Freelancers can’t afford scotch.

Now that all the freelancers have spit their lattes onto their screens and have skipped to the comments section to bang out angry retorts on their mechanical keyboards, let’s talk about telecommuting. I have had coworkers who refuse to work from home. They have tried and are unproductive, or they claim that “out of sight, out of mind” makes them vulnerable. These are real dangers with telecommuting, so why would you want to do so in the first place?

Why Telecommuting Is the Greatest Work Arrangement Ever, Short of Inheriting Billions and Becoming a Vigilante Superhero

“What is it you’d say you actually do around here?” (Image copyright Warner Bros. via batman.wikia.com)

The benefits of telecommuting, for both the employee and the employer, are vast. Due to constant improvements in team communication software, voice and video conferencing, and cloud infrastructure, its greatest drawback – lack of team cohesiveness – is quickly fading. Aside from being able to join conference calls in your Wonder Woman pajamas (a benefit that really shouldn’t be understated), working from home provides a number of other benefits to you as an employee, including:

1. Significantly reduced commute. On a good day, my drive into work is 25 minutes. Working from home, I can get to work in about 15-30 seconds. Road rage is a thing of the past, and the worst traffic I have to deal with are the early morning zombie teenagers shuffling down the hallways.
2. Personal privacy. Being able to relieve yourself without having to walk in on Leonard’s cacophonous morning post-coffee-and-Egg-McMuffin sabbatical. This is about on par with the next item, but the 10-year-old in me couldn’t resist listing it as number two.
3. Improved lunch hour. Besides saving money on gas and reducing wear and tear on your car, you can also save money on food and reduce wear and tear on your health by having your whole kitchen available at lunch and not dropping $10 a day on whatever gut bomb everyone agrees to after 15 minutes of “I don’t care, where do you want to go?” You can save up to 30 minutes of your lunch hour by reducing discussion, travel, ordering, waiting, etc.
4. More options for spending those saved 30 minutes.
5. Increased productivity. Though face time with your coworkers can be good, let’s be honest: many interactions with people in the office are not exactly what you’d call “productive.” Just a few of the many pointless conversations you can avoid while working from home are:

• Whatever Kim Kardashian is doing this week.
• The accomplishments or failures of itinerant athletes who happen to be playing in your city during this phase of their contract.
• Why Donald Trump and/or Bernie Sanders are Satan and/or Stalin.
• Your coworker’s latest trouble with their child/spouse/neighbor/colon.

Employers also benefit from their employees telecommuting. They can save money on facilities, including electricity, parking, real estate, and coffee. Work-from-home employees are also generally happier, more productive, and may even be willing to take a pay cut for the ability to telecommute. If you’re an employer exploring telecommuting for your workers (or were just forced into it by current events), check out the research by Global Workplace Analytics.

So now that you’ve shared that article with your boss and have joined the ranks of the telecommuter, here’s how you can be successful.

You Are Not a Freelancer

CC BY 2.0 – Jenny Ondioline

I know what you’re thinking.

“Um, didn’t you just say that?”

No, I said they are different. Here, I’m saying, “Don’t act like a freelancer if you’re a telecommuter.” Your job is not to just turn in a completed project at the end of a deadline. That may be your assignment, but your job is much more. It involves staying in communication with both coworkers and management, helping your teammates when they need it, and participating in company meetings.

It also includes staying in contact with people outside your team. “Out of sight, out of mind” is an actual risk if you don’t manage your interactions. Ask questions of other departments. Even better, volunteer to be the one that helps Steve in Marketing with his software issues, or send a thank you e-mail to the HR director for her work organizing the company softball team. This is less of a risk if your entire department telecommutes, but if you are part of a small portion of the team that is not in the office regularly, you need to make yourself visible in other ways.

If your company uses video conferencing, you also need to maintain a professional appearance at all times. Follow the company dress code (at least the parts that are visible on camera), and be presentable. Leave the scotch in the bottle until 5, turn off the Nickelback, and put out the cigarette. I get it that you’re in your own house, and you’ll smoke if you want. (Or vape, solve a Rubik’s cube, juggle kittens, or whatever else it is you may do in your household. I’m not here to judge.) However, a video conference is not the time to do any of these things. It’s at the very least distracting and borders on unprofessional.

A professional appearance does not end at your person, either. Your work space is also a reflection of your professionalism. Obviously, every company is different, so use your best judgment. If you work for a startup, that Megadeth poster on the wall and 15″ Harley Quinn statue on the end table might be acceptable. Working for Billy Graham Ministries… probably not. If your area is cluttered or contains questionable items in the background, and that’s what helps you work well, then grab your laptop and walk into another room or even invest in a chroma key backdrop. (If your company uses Microsoft Teams, it now has a “background blur” option to resolve this issue.)

“I’m Trying to Work Here!!!”

CC BY 2.0 – Personal Creations

Working from home becomes even more difficult for those of us who have families, particularly during the summer or other times when the kids are home (e.g., during a global pandemic). You cannot expect everyone else’s life to be put on hold simply because you’re telecommuting. Similarly, you have to set boundaries and expectations for the rest of your family. This is your job, and if you’re not at least as productive as you are in the office, you should not be telecommuting.

The first step is choosing your work space. If you don’t have a home office, any room dedicated specifically to you during work hours, such as a bedroom with a decent work space and a door, will suffice. Reclining in the living room with your laptop while your kids watch anime or play Call of Duty is a recipe for failure. Similarly, while the large flat surface of the kitchen table can be tempting, for most people, the kitchen is the center of most household activity. Traffic alone can be distracting, even if your family is not asking you to let the dog out, answer the door, get them a glass of milk, help them with their homework, or the thousands of other parental duties you’re used to performing when you’re at home.

This is one of the hardest parts of telecommuting. Everyone in the family needs to understand that, during work hours, you are not there. You are at work. Little ones in particular will have a hard time understanding why Mom or Dad can’t come play with them when they’re right there in the other room. I have gone as far as asking that, if someone needs something, they text me just like they would if I were at the office. Whatever rules you set in place, stay consistent and don’t allow yourself to be distracted by what’s going on around you.

Where Do I Start?

So now you’re at home and ready to start working. Now what?

If your employer is already used to people working from home, there’s little else you need to do. Find the pattern that works best for you through experimentation. Do you prefer your face-to-face work first thing in the morning and prefer the afternoon for uninterrupted productive work, or do you like to roll out of bed straight into your tasks? Put a coffee machine in your office or use break times to visit with your family for a few minutes? Working from home successfully is a series of small improvements. Don’t give up. It takes some effort, but it’s more than worth it.

If you are one of the first to work from home, it’s going to be up to you to set a good example and prove that it’s a feasible work arrangement for your company. Keep in contact with your boss as much as, if not more than, you do while in the office. Be responsive to all communication, again at least as responsive as you are in the office. Likely, you’ll need to be even more on top of responding to other people. There will be an assumption by some coworkers that you’re sitting in your underwear, playing video games, and just checking your phone every once in a while. Others might think you’re spending all day with your kids, using “telecommuting” as an excuse to save on childcare costs. Respond to instant messages immediately, even if it’s with something like “Let me look at that when I get to a good stopping point.”

In addition to communication, there may be infrastructure that needs to be set up for telecommuters. Many companies have VPN access for their employees or are moving to a decentralized solution for all work resources. If you have input into the decision process, I recommend the latter. Your IT team may be awesome, but they will never be able to affordably provide the up-time that a commercial solution can. If you find yourself more than once making the excuse “The VPN was down” for why you couldn’t do something, you probably need to give up on telecommuting or convince your employer to move resources offsite.

Here are just a few of the products and solutions I either currently use or have used successfully in the past. Do a little research, and you’ll probably find something that fits your needs regardless of your industry.

Microsoft Teams: We pretty much use Teams for everything now. It handles phone calls, video conference, desktop sharing, instant messaging, and whiteboards.

VMware Horizon is a virtualized desktop. This means you can connect to it anywhere and it will always have what you need. You will use much less of your own internet bandwidth, and it’s already connected to the work network, so VPN becomes unnecessary.

Bose QuietComfort 35 II Wireless Bluetooth Headphones: You’re going to need that extra noise reduction if you have others in the house with you.

A good microphone is essential. You don’t want to be that person nobody wants to call because you sound like you’re transmitting from a Soviet bunker in 1982. You can spend as little as $50 on something like a Blue Snowball, all the way up to several hundred on a professional mic from Apogee.

Working from home can be challenging, but with these tips and a little extra effort, the rewards can be… fulfilling.

Sky rockets in flight…