Key takeaways as a remote worker in UK
It is not surprising that a lot of compromises were made when COVID-19 pandemic affected the world. Maybe the right term to say is that everyone is perplexed. With various health and safety rules and regulations that needed to be followed, even the business sector is also forced to adapt to these changes. In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics in April 2020 showed that 49.2% of adults in employment were working from home due to the effect of social distancing in our society.
Even before the pandemic, remote working was one of the options for work in the UK. Whereas in 2015, 4.2 million people from different business sectors were working from home. The reason for this growing trend can be answered from two perspectives: [1] employer and [2] the remote worker.
Reflecting on their previous life as permanent employees, many of them said that they felt restricted due to the monotony of daily life, office politics, and corporate structures. Here are some of the lessons remote workers learned from their work from home experience:
- Money – as a freelancer, you can demand more from your clients depending on the complexity of their requests, unlike if you are a regular employee, you will only see a small increase in your salary on a yearly basis.
- Be your own boss – of course, worker’s need to feel a sense of purpose and having to work under a leader with no goal of making employees realize their worth could lower their morale. A poor working environment is a huge factor why employees leave their jobs. Being your own boss means that you create your own business culture and sense of purpose. Take control of your environment.
- Satisfaction – one advantage of being a freelancer is you get to choose what type of job you do which is very different when compared to the traditional company set-up where employees are forced to comply to standardised and alienated work. In remote working, people have more freedom to do things that they want i.e. pursuing their passion or spending quality time with their family.
