Represent

Did you know that the entire future of Work-At-Home rests on your shoulders? YOUR shoulders? Well, it does.

Work at home employees are constantly under a microscope. We know that we have to work 150%+ compared to the average worker to "compensate" for our distance. But what happens when work at home goes wrong? Answer: You ruin it for everyone.

It's an unfair reality, but any misstep when you are remote is associated with the fact that you are remote. The same mistake could happen in the office, or be worse in the office, but the world is wearing local-colored glasses and only sees your demographics. Whatever happened, being at home is to blame.

Worse, when they blame home for the mistake, they cast a wide net and associate that mistake with everyone. You all remember Yahoo! pulling back, right? Whatever their issue was, it surely wasn't the entire company. Closer to home, I am getting questioned about my own remote work because it is failing in another area. I have news for you - My team has outstanding engagement scores, high productivity, great quality, and the best individual people you'll ever meet. Whatever *your* problem is, don't reflect it on me!

But that is what inevitably will happen. Remote work is a scapegoat for whatever the real problem is. And yet the opposite is not true. If you are a rockstar at home, you don't see a movement for everyone else to do it. It only happens when it goes belly up.

What does this mean for you? It means that you must realize that you represent the entire remote community. Your success is your success, but your failure is failure for us all. You have a huge burden to always shine, and you probably don't even realize it. So I'm here to tell you, on behalf of all the remote workers out there (and especially myself, but I LOVE working from home), you better wow your colleagues every day. If not, we're forming a posse...

To quote Spock, in honorable memory of Leonard Nimoy: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

Live long and prosper (from home).