With the advancements in telecommunication devise and the Internet working from home offices is becoming more common. This particular scheduling option is very popular with new parents who want to stay home with their infant. However, this situation creates some problems for both the employee and the employer.
First, unless the employee is well disciplined, they may find it difficult to get their work done without being distracted by home-life. Constant interruptions caused by personal calls, babies crying or needing attention, children running around, and television may all hinder the employee’s ability to focus on their work and get it completed in a timely manner.
For the employer, the work-at-home situation may reduce overhead, and help them to keep valuable employees on payroll, but it also produces several obstacles that are difficult to overcome. First, they have no way to supervise the work that is being done, nor do they have a way of knowing how much time the employee actually spent working and how much time they spent tending to their personal needs. Time keeping, pay scales, and monitoring for safety are all issues that are difficult to manage in traditional ways for work-at-home employees.
Shift Work
Shift work is the last scheduling option that will be examined. In this situation there are several shifts during a 24-hour period that an employee can work. Often the employees rotate what shifts they work so that it doesn’t interfere too much with their natural sleep-wake cycles.
This particular type of work schedule is helpful for couples who both work and who have children. The various shifts makes it feasible for one parent or partner to be with the children while the other works.
The drawbacks to this type of work schedule are based around the effects late night shift working has on the body’s natural circadian rhythms. Prolonged exposure to late night shift work doesn’t reduce the negative side effects, but instead intensifies them leading to digestive, appetite, and sleeping problems. It can also affect the person’s social life, as when they are asleep most people are awake, and when they are awake most people are asleep. This hinders who they can socialize with and when. This could have a very bad impact on their family life.