While there are certainly wonderful advantages to working from home, I now want to tell you about the disadvantages of working from home:

Many South Africans experience the disadvantages of working from home, so why do they continue working from home? I think it’s because they sometimes need to work from home because they can’t find a job, or, because the advantages of working from home usually outweigh the disadvantages of working from home.

Disadvantages (especially when working alone from home, without a partner or staff) like the following 11 disadvantages:

Not getting sick leave;

Not still earning while you go on vacation;

Not still earning while you do little things like make a cup of coffee, go to the loo, or lie down a while because you’re tired or feeling ill;

Loneliness because of no workmates to chat to;

Having family and friends interrupting you whenever they feel like it, or asking you to run errands or help them out with something because they just don’t get that even though you work from home, you still need to put in many hours of work;

Friends and family not understanding why you can’t take time off to pop in and see them or spend some time with them;

Feeling guilty or stressed if you spend even an hour or two away from work trying to relax because you know that every hour away from work is an hour’s less pay or effort for that day;

Figure out your own bookkeeping, and taxes or have to spend money to hire somebody to do your bookkeeping and taxes for you;

Working out the best and cheapest ways to market your products or services, and spending a lot of time doing that marketing – or having to spend money to hire somebody to do your marketing and adverting for you.

Not being able to pass difficult customers or clients, difficult questions or difficult enquiries on to higher management or on to the boss because you are the higher management or boss yourself;

Being the sole person responsible for making your customers or clients happy.

© Copyright Teresa Schultz 2012 and 2013