{"id":1327,"date":"2013-05-13T01:57:04","date_gmt":"2013-05-13T01:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web02.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters2\/archives\/1327"},"modified":"2015-05-24T07:06:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T07:06:59","slug":"the-pros-and-cons-of-having-a-home-office2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/archives\/1327","title":{"rendered":"The pros and cons of having a home office"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, research found that most Hongkongers work for 44.3 hours per week, which is higher than the standard of healthy working hours. \u00a0The poor work-life balance of Hongkongers starts to spark a lot of discussion. \u00a0There are a lot of suggested ways to halt the unhealthy trend, including having a home office. \u00a0Is this really a way out for all those workaholics in Hong Kong?<\/span><\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, working at home provides employees with greater flexibility in scheduling. \u00a0They can decide their own timing and accommodate tasks that need to be accomplished. \u00a0They also spend less time on travelling. \u00a0In a cosmopolitan city like Hong Kong, thousands of people waste time on traveling to and from work. \u00a0With a home office, they can save the travelling time and spend it on other aspects, such as having supper with family and friends. \u00a0It also allows working parents to spend more time with their children. \u00a0The less they worry about their children, the more concentration and productivity at work. \u00a0It helps them to strike a better balance between work and life.<\/p>\n

Working at home also creates a more relaxing and comfortable working environment. \u00a0Research found that a relaxing working environment helps boost employees\u2019 performance. \u00a0Emotional disorders, like anxiety and depression, are more likely to be developed under stress. \u00a0A comfortable working environment helps relieve workers\u2019 stress and improve their moods. \u00a0They can take a short rest or have some light refreshment whenever they like. \u00a0It helps improve their mental health, leading to a better quality of life.<\/p>\n

On top of the advantages mentioned above, mobile workers are also allowed to wear casual wear during work, unless there is a web-cam conference. \u00a0People can thus save expenses on clothing since they no longer need to buy formal suits or smart casual clothes so often anymore. \u00a0Wearing comfortable clothes can actually increase productivity in return. \u00a0Since they no longer need to travel from home to work, transportation expenses are saved. \u00a0In other words, having a home office can help people to save a considerable amount of money.<\/p>\n

However, there are some drawbacks of having a home office as well.<\/p>\n

Working at home requires a high level of self-discipline and self-motivation. \u00a0People who lack self-discipline may not be able to finish tasks on time since there is no pressure to start work at a time. \u00a0It is very easy to put work off. \u00a0There are also many kinds of temptation and distraction at home, such as the evil bed. \u00a0People may easily get distracted, instead of focusing on work. \u00a0Tasks that would otherwise take 15 minutes can end up taking up a lot more time. \u00a0The circumstance is even worse when it comes to someone who has a habit of hitting the snooze alarm.<\/p>\n

Another disadvantage of working at home is lack of human interaction. \u00a0The only thing you encounter and interact with at work is the computer. \u00a0Staying in such a relaxing and colleague-free environment for too long may lead to a decline in competitive spirit. \u00a0Having colleagues and peers helps keep the competitive spirit alive, and thus enhance the productivity. \u00a0Building up a good and extensive social network is also crucial at the workplace. \u00a0Working at home may also make it difficult for workers to build a strong bond with colleagues and a sense of belonging to the company.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, having a home office helps workers to have a better work-life balance, a more relaxing working environment and more savings while it may result in delay in accomplishing tasks and a lack of human interaction. \u00a0In fact, the long working hours in Hong Kong is quite worrying. \u00a0It is an urgent issue to be solved. \u00a0Therefore, introducing a pilot scheme of home offices in some companies can be a way out to test if it can really alleviate the problem of poor work-life balance in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, research found that most Hongkongers work for 44.3 hours per week, which is higher than the standard of healthy working hours. \u00a0The poor work-life balance of Hongkongers starts to spark a lot of discussion. \u00a0There are a lot of suggested ways to halt the unhealthy trend, including having a .........<\/span><\/p>Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":8474,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","language-en","schoolyear-34"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3169,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/3169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carmelss.edu.hk\/buddingwriters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}