How to work from home in the USA

Working from home, aka “WFH – Work from home” is an authorized and common practice in my company. we would probably talk about “telework”, a word that I find particularly corny (I associate it with Minitel). The first time I worked from home, it was a house party: I was asked not to come to the office for the day, and I had the impression that this day was a gift. Alas, this was not the case, the principle being to continue working from home. The subject of working from home has recently been debated here in the United States because the CEO of Yahoo has banned her employees from using it. Before it hits me, here is how I have viewed it so far…

I am still quite shy about working from home – in other words, I don’t abuse it. It’s a bit like when I start a new job, at first I don’t dare go online and I use sparingly all the supplies provided.

After a few weeks, it's a rout. Well with working from home, I'm still at stage 1, "I don't dare too much", I do it when I need to:

• If I have an appointment with the doctor in the middle of the afternoon, I go there and then I go home to work and make up for my "lost" hours.

• if I have a late meeting with the West Coast – which is 3 or 4 hours behind Boston.

• when the weather conditions are very unfavorable. This winter, twice, I received alert messages on my cell phone: a recorded voice introducing itself as "the voice of the company" asked me to stay at home until further notice "Validate by pressing 1 if you understood the message". The first time, it was because of a hurricane, and the second time, because of a blizzard. It was no joke, there was no question of coming to work, besides the metro was not working, and ars were prohibited from driving or parking in the city.

Sometimes I could have stayed home but I didn't dare, it's stupid but during the last snowstorms in Boston - less severe than the blizzard in early February, I found myself alone in the large open space. I hadn't received the warning message and as a good student, I had put on my furry boots to go to the office. A lot of people had stayed home.

The benefits of working from home

• Flexibility. What I like most about being able to work from home is not having the oppressive rigidity of having to go to work at the office. That's what I missed in France, sometimes with the metro strikes, or just on mornings when "I didn't feel well" (as vague as that is), it could have been a good solution to work from home. My life constraints are fairly light: no children to pick up, no family to help nearby, Iand 'm in good health. For some people, it's vital to have a little flexibility in work hours. So,  when Yahoo's CEO decided to ban employees from working from home, it sparked debate. Her arguments were mainly based on the team spirit that should be encouraged by working from the office, and the importance of being focused on one's work.

• At home, it's cozy.  My productivity level in the cubicle is similar to that at home: it depends on the day. Generally speaking, I still find it more comfortable to work in my apartment. My cubicle is too ugly, brown, and over-air-conditioned. while my office area at home is super cute, facing the window. My colleagues work in pajamas from home (I have my sources), I'm not too much of a fan... almost the comfy yoga outfit, but working with greasy hair in front of the screen gives me psychological chills.

What I like less…

• Lonesome worker.  The advantages of going to the office is spending time with my colleagues, feeling part of a team, chatting while eating lunch.

• Demonstrate zeal remotely.  You have to be very careful to tell everyone: I email the whole team with the subject WFH and the phone number where I can be reached at any time. I update all my company social network statuses (gtalk, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to clearly show that I have turned on my computer and will work from home. I don't have the excuse of saying that I don't have the Machin file on hand, because all the work documents are shared on a common server accessible from anywhere, the "cloud". Hats off to efficiency.