How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work From Home
Telecommuting is now pretty straightforward. Skype, Slack, and plain old Gchat – sorry, Google Hangouts – make it easy to communicate with colleagues down the hallway or around the world, whether you’re in the office or not. But if you’re concerned about starting a remote work program, or looking to start a trial job with your boss, be sure to start small and provide feedback to help you work from home again in the future.
Start small because you can hate it
If you’ve never worked from home before, full focus from the start can be disastrous. If your office environment isn’t designed for working from home, or if you lack the camaraderie of colleagues, you may be distracted, discouraged, or unprepared for your new freedom.
You can start by proposing a work-from-home schedule of one day a week, possibly a slower work day. If you pick one day, like Friday, when work slows down, you can plan your day based on what you have access to in the office and what you don’t. Limiting can also help you schedule appointments so that no one in your company tries to find you when you are in your home office. Oh, and don’t forget to set up your home office so you have everything you normally need at work, just in case.
Use evidence to your advantage
Your boss may be skeptical about letting some of his employees work without actually being in the office, but the research and actual results of the benefits of telecommuting are hard to ignore.
A Stanford University study used a travel agency with 20,000 employees as the test subject and found that employees working from home improved productivity by 13% compared to their office counterparts. The travel agency also generated up to $ 2,000 in additional revenue per telecommuter, helping to justify the need for teleworking.
Report good and bad reviews
Making a to-do list will show your employer how seriously you take the opportunity to work remotely. Describe what went well, how much work you did while working from home, and what you think you or your boss can do to make the experience more productive. It will give your employer a compelling reason to increase your time to work remotely and show you how you think about ways to improve the experience.
The list of issues you may have encountered while working remotely will also show you how you are working on ways to make remote work as easy as possible. If you find people asking where you are when you are working from home, or demanding your personal attention when you are away, this may require a solution that you and your team can work out together.