What jobs are impossible to do from home?

Nothing is impossible. Or is it? The increased trend of working from home has made a lot of people adapt their home environment into a home office. They must make technology work for them, to support them and their work, so they can continue their service even if they are at home. Given the threat of the 2019 Coronavirus, public health experts recommend companies to encourage employees to work from home as much as possible to prevent the potentially deadly COVID-19 from spreading around offices, public transit and people elsewhere. However flattering being able to save time because you will not need to commute to work everyday and beat the traffic, some people would say working from home is exhausting.

In addition to that, a lot of factors are needed to be considered to ensure how effective working from home is. For example if an employee has access to high speed internet or software to complete remote tasks. People must also take into account their home based distractions like children, pets, commitments and family. Focusing on tasks is harder at home. As much as we want to make remote work possible because of the health safety concerns, we can understand too that not all work is applicable at home. What jobs are impossible to do from home? Jobs in fields of retail, dining, tourism, and other industries, can’t simply log on to software like Outlook, Slack or Google Hangouts to do their job because it requires a different tool. 

When we think of work from home, we do not just think of employees working in an office or desk jobs. Hence, there are hundreds of occupations out there and we can agree that not all of it would be applicable for a remote work setting. Of course, jobs in agriculture that supply people their basic needs cannot work from home too. Having said that, this pandemic shouldn’t be taken lightly by anyone because there are people who are risking their lives just so they can continue rendering service to a job they signed up for. 

There is usually the opportunity to adapt.

Hairdressers can offer virtual hair cutting lessons online, and can offer advice on what the best haircut and colour is for the facial features and skin tones of their clients through Video Chat. 

Bars and pubs can offer take away services, or cocktail, whiskey and wine tutorials.

Hotels can cater for the quarantine customers who must stay in hotels for 2 weeks upon arriving in a new country.

Farmers can offer social distancing and have one person picking the fruit from one tree, where in the past we might have had 4 people per tree.

Dog walkers can buy treadmills.  

We concede that not all jobs can be done from home, fields can not be ploughed, scuba diving can not be done, swimming (for the most part) can not be completed.

But where there is a will, there is a way.

Can you adapt your job slightly to make it, or elements of it, work from home? 

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