I thought that I was the luckiest person in the world when my boss announced that he was going to allow us all to work from home. We were elated. We were also not alone. As it turns out, working from your house, apartment or otherwise is fast becoming the norm for many people around both the United States as well as the world. Not only is it significantly more convenient, but it allows employees the flexibility to continue on with their daily lives uninterrupted by the fact that they have to stay within strict guidelines of being at an office between certain hours and then battling rush hour traffic.

There are many jobs which don't really require an office. In many cases, people actually wind up losing money by having an office space rented when, in fact, they could just run the business from their houses. Now, there is some advantage to having an office. Depending on what type of business you are employed with, having an space for clients to come to might prove to be beneficial because there are many who still feel that this is “professional”. However, many business people don't even hold meetings at their office location anymore. In fact, I was talking to someone the other day who, in the middle of the conversation, claimed that they had to go meet someone for a business lunch at the local coffee shop. Additionally, there are also office spaces that you can rent for a few hours up to a few days if you need to host meetings with other individuals. Hotels will also offer “conference room” type settings in which to have meetings.

Working from home, like any other job, however, also has its share of pitfalls. For starters, when you work from home, you have to be really good about setting up a schedule for yourself. It can be really easy to get caught up in a litany of other things that you suddenly remembered you had to do. But what would you have done with that “list” if you knew you had to go into the office five days a week? For people who tend to procrastinate, working from home is probably not the best option because it requires you to create your own work structure. For a good chunk of Americans, we still need to have someone tell us what to do and sort of when we should do it, mostly because we don't want to take the time to figure it out ourselves (This is why people are hired as managers!). While some employers may allow employees some flexibility to come in and do their work, there are plenty of other employers who strictly say that you have to be at work from 9 a.m. To 5 p.m. no questions asked!

Obviously, there are still jobs which will require you to jump in your car and sit in traffic for a half an hour before you can even see your office building, but for better or for worse, these jobs are now competing with the fact that so many more employers are jumping on board with the whole “work from home” theme song that everyone seems to be singing. Because people are able to work from home as salaried employees with benefits, this is forcing other office-based employees to have to seriously reconsider how they are going to attract employees to work for them. Employees now have more options than ever in terms of where they want to work and when. After all, if given the choice between a salaried position working for a company that also offered benefits but you had to drive there versus working a salaried/benefits paid job from home where you could make your own hours and work things around YOUR schedule, which do you honestly believe people would choose?