If you are not one who gets turned on by the advertising teaser ”Hot New Tandys,” you might be surprised to learn that working at home is gaining ground.
Recent books and periodicals are one indication. There are newsletters on home-based businesses and telecommuting (working from home for an outside employer), books such as ”The Woman`s Work-at-Home Handbook: Income and Independence with a Computer” (Bantam, $9.95), and a new magazine called Home Office, published by Time Inc.
Some 13 million to 14 million Americans work from home, says California author and consultant Paul Edwards. Edwards and his wife, Sarah, have worked from home about 10 years and co-authored ”Working From Home. Everything You Need to Know About Living and Working Under the Same Roof” (Jeremy P. Tarcher, $11.95).
Of those millions of home workers, Edwards says, at least 2 million to 3 million are using home computers to run their own businesses from home or to link up with their employers` offices.
It`s the personal computer, in fact, that`s really changing the work-at-home scene across America, observers say.
Few would envision the PC as a liberator. But the computer is leading the technological revolution that is turning American homes into veritable whole- life units in which we eat, play, work and sleep. Its accessibility and affordability allow millions of Americans to get off the freeways, away from the office buildings, out of the three-piece suits and above the office politics. Where they live is where they work, and they get to call the shots. The life pod is also a work pod.
In occupations such as writing and accounting, which always have lent themselves to home work, personal computers simply make the job easier and more efficient. But computers also are helping hatch new professions, such as information brokering–searching computerized data bases for a fee.
Along with telephone answering machines, home computers allow some business owners to manage their companies single-handedly, rather than setting up a regular office and hiring assistants.
”With a personal computer, you can have the equivalent of a multiperson office,” Edwards said. With the right software, the machine can serve as secretary, bookkeeper, file clerk and researcher, he says.
New technology may provide the tools to help people work at home, but the motivations are purely human. Experts say changing lifestyles and economic trends are responsible.
With large corporations reducing their work forces and encouraging early retirements, more people are looking for ways to go into business for themselves, Edwards says. Some simply are disillusioned with the traditional working world.
”Many of the people working at home now are in their 30s and 40s,” said Barbara Thompson Howell, managing editor of Home Office. ”They`ve spent time in the workplace and found that there`s a great deal of competition and the rewards are slow in coming.”
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Other people choose to work at home to avoid grueling commutes or for the chance to be ”more of a blue-jeans than a pinstripe person,” says Gil Gordon, a New Jersey-based consultant who helps companies arrange for employees to work from home.
Gordon himself left a job with Johnson & Johnson in 1982 after 10 years of personnel work with the company. ”I really wasn`t that excited by the corporate world anymore,” he said. ”And, I also did it on a dare.”
A year earlier, Gordon had heard a speaker from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics comment that having employees working from home ”might be good for a few oddballs,” but would never take off. Gordon scrawled a note to a friend sitting with him: ”I`ll bet he`s wrong.” Today, Gordon`s home-based business is alive and the note is laminated and hanging on his wall.
Flexibility is what home-based workers seem to like best about their arrangements.
”If you planned to go to the lake on Saturday and it rains, you can work Saturday and go to the lake on Tuesday,” said Gordon. You can do your grocery shopping when everyone else is at work and work when everyone else is grocery shopping.
That flexibility–and the appearance of an unstructured lifestyle–can lead to problems with neighbors who assume that because you don`t go to work, you`re available to sign for their parcels, let the plumber into their homes and take an extra turn at the car pool.
Katherine Ackerman`s home business as an information broker in East Lansing took off shortly after her son, Brad, was born 4 years ago.
”My neighbor was still used to me being a mom at home, like I had been, so that was hard because she wanted me to baby-sit,” she said. The neighbor didn`t understand that Ackerman had to spend Brad`s nap times working at her computer, she says.
Dealing with the problem takes ”nothing more than a good dose of assertiveness,” says Gordon. ”You can`t just say, `Darn it, go away. Can`t you see I`m working?` You have to explain that when you`re at home working, you`re every bit as committed to your job as they are when they`re at the office.”
Kids can make working at home an even bigger challenge. A few home workers are so good at filtering out distractions they can let their children play underfoot, or at the computer keyboard, without being disturbed.
”The other day I was working and my 4-year-old son came in and tied me up with string and tape. I was concentrating so hard I didn`t notice,” said San Diego writer Richard Louv.
But many a stay-at-home worker who thought child care and professional work could mesh ends up hiring a baby-sitter or sending the kids off to day care. For others, the solution is ”the family council meeting that Robert Young used to have on `Father Knows Best,` ” says Gordon. ”You set down ground rules and negotiate with everybody about what`s going to happen.”
On the other hand, working near one`s children can bring a family closer. Before James Jablonski of Troy, Mich., left his job with an accounting firm a year ago, his two daughters ”had no concept of what I was,” he says. ”All they knew was that I did tax returns.”
When Jablonski set up his practice in the family`s basement, he recruited his daughters, ages 11 and 13, to help organize supplies and cut up scrap paper for memo pads. The girls, delighted to be included, became more interested in their father`s work, he says. The 13-year-old recently told him she`s considering studying accounting when she goes to college.
When 9-to-5ers fantasize about shoving their office jobs and doing their work from home, they imagine they`ll leave behind all the stresses of the working world. No more tiptoeing past the boss` desk when they`re five minutes late; no more personality clashes with co-workers; no more jangling telephones and jangled nerves.
In fact, the very lack of co-workers, bosses and ringing phones can be stressful. Isolation is one of the most common complaints of home-based workers.
When Louv was working on his book ”America II” a few years ago, he soon tired of the ”just me and the word processor” routine. He gave the computer a name, Harcourt P. Farcouth, and on a few bleary-eyed nights even thought the thing was talking to him. But the machine was no substitute for humanity.
”I ended up going down to the shopping center to a coffee shop and writing longhand . . . purely out of the need for human association,” he said. Louv, who writes a column for the San Diego Union, still works from home but also goes to the newspaper for a few hours several times a week.
Coralee Smith Kern, who founded the Chicago-based National Association for the Cottage Industry, writes a newsletter called ”Mind Your Own Business at Home” and runs a cleaning service from home. She advises other home-based workers to get out of the house as much as possible ”to do their own banking, walk to the printer`s, go out for breakfast, go out for lunch, go to dinner meetings, join professional associations, join a health club.”
Another common problem is ”what we call self-management–it`s a muscle located somewhere between the brain and the bottom,” says Edwards. ”It`s the ability to get started in the morning when you`re not going through the rituals of getting dressed, getting in the car, driving to the job.”
Most people who shift from a traditional job to home-based work go through a one- to two-month adjustment period during which their productivity drops, Edwards says. Eventually, most set rules for themselves and come up with rituals to create the feeling of ”going to work.”
Once stay-at-home workers find the best work patterns for themselves, they`re often more productive than ever because they work when they`re most alert and energetic–whether it`s 3 p.m. or 3 a.m.
When that happens, there`s just one thing to watch out for.
”What happens is you begin to lose the distinction between day and night, weekends and weekdays,” Gordon said. ”It can become a workaholic`s dream.”