Topic: Today people spend more time travelling to work than before. Some people suggest employers should allow employees to do some work from home. Do you think the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?
The exponential increase in the population of the world has profoundly affected people's daily routine life in many different ways. One of the most tangible influences is the presence of thousands of automobiles in streets, contributing to traffic jams and, subsequently, wasting people's time while they are heading their work places. Some people highlight the issue of the time consumed for reaching a work place and bring forth the idea of working at home in order to save time. This type of work policy may have positive and negative implications for the society, which both will be addressed in this essay with the intent to come to a comprehensive conclusion over the matter.
Changing home to office mainly impacts the productivity of individuals. There are many distractive elements at home that prevent people from concentrating on what they are supposed to do as their jobs. For example, visual entertaining devices like TV and video games, which are frequently found in any houses these days, can be viewed as bad distractions, decreasing proficient working hours of an employee. In addition, it is proven that employees work harder when they know that their activities are being watched by supervisors while they are at their offices. Staying at home literally eliminates this implicit working drive.
One the other hand, if white-collar workers are given the leverage to do their jobs at home rather than companies, it would benefit both themselves directly and the environment indirectly. As an example, a mother who is spending a majority of her time out at work will lose the chance of being with her children. Staying at home while she can keep her job provides her with a huge privilege to raise her kids more appropriately and contribute to the household income simultaneously. Moreover, according to a survey published in the Times magazine more than 40% of employees in London have jobs that do not necessarily require their presence in the corresponding work places. Conducting such works at houses means 40% reduction in traffic congestion, and as a result, dramatic decrease in air pollution, which has been reached an alarming level worldwide.
To sum up, similar to many new occupational strategies, replacing houses with traditional working areas has its own merits and demerits. From my perspective, this working structure would bring more advantages to the society than disadvantages. In the light of the aforementioned facts, I believe that its positive social and environmental influences are more important issues than distractions, which can be controlled by applying a systematic job plan.
This is a well discussed essay that covers all of the topics that you need to discuss regarding telecommuting and office work. However, instead of using just mothers at the example of people who will benefit from working from home, why not use a more neutral example. For example, discuss how some people work better when allowed to simply deliver their tasks without supervision. The existence of the home amenities often translates into a more relaxed and comfortable work atmosphere for other home based employees and thus, aids in a better result in terms of work productivity. Since your opinion is also being asked for, why not place yourself in both situations and explain why you feel that you would work better in a particular situation? Do you think that would work for you in this essay?
@ TJ: Thanks for your helpful comments.
Since your opinion is also being asked for, why not place yourself in both situations and explain why you feel that you would work better in a particular situation? Do you think that would work for you in this essay?
Thank you very much Luisa. This is a brilliant idea. I will write this topic again as I think I could have made a stronger discussion. Hope I can get your feedback on the new version too :)
