Working from home...?

I may be getting ahead of myself a bit, but I've been offered a job to work Customer Service for a major US bank from home.  I accepted. They're sending me a computer and I'm supposed to start at the end of the month.  I have a lot of feelers out for various jobs so I might have the option to work at a traditional call center at some point. 

Do any other Hive members work from home?  Overall opinions as to whether it's preferable to driving in to work?  If so, how much is the ability to stay home worth to you in salary differential?

Thanks to COVID, DW has been WFH since early March.  Her company is saying that they will not reopen her campus to anything approaching normalcy until at least the end of October.  She loves working at home, and I expect that once they do open the campus she is going to lobby to stay WFH for at least several days a week.

Her only complaint is how many online meetings they have.  It seems it's easier for people to decide to call a Zoom meeting than it is for them to try to get everyone into the conference room.  But about 6 weeks ago she was given the option to go into the office as needed (her option) and she has absolutely tried to minimize the number of hours she's gone in.  I think she's been in maybe 3 times in total, and not even for whole days.  Her job is mostly electronic document creation and workflow development, so there is no real need for her to be there in person as long as someone is there to collect all the required physical document signatures, etc.

I WFH from mid March through mid June.  It wasn't bad for me - mostly a matter of missing my work desktop computer with its multiple titanic monitors.  Other than that it went pretty well, though it was harder for me to put in a full 8 hour day than being at the office. I was probably 85% efficient.

For a CSR job, I think working from home would be great, as long as you have a little dedicated space you can work.  I don't know your family situation, but having kids around would be tough.  I also assume it's more easily task-segmented, so once you clock out after your last call, there's no real temptation to "just finish up that one more thing" on your own time.

Good luck!

No big deal. Get a comfortable setup. Create a signaling system for the wife and kids so they know when you can be disturbed and when you can't.

I am an engineer for a smallish firm (~200 employees) that has a large sense of autonomy, so I have been working from home since the beginning of this crap. My wife is expected our second kid, so I don't want to put her at any undue risk. It helps that the other guys in the company I am working with are all in different states anyways, so I wouldn't actually be working with anyone in my physical office. For that unique reason, WFH doesn't have many negatives. I have to pay for my own coffee now, so I guess that is worse. 

When I was working out of the DC office for this same company, I would work from home two days per week to avoid the 1hr commute, but when I moved to NC I got a house 15 minutes from work. Because I already was doing the part time WFH, I have a pretty good office setup with multiple monitors and plenty of space. So WFH doesn't save THAT much time, but still it is a free half hour per day and reduced miles on the cars. I do miss riding my motorcycle to work though since that was about the only time I'd ride it.

I've been WFH since mid-March thanks to the pandemic.  I've been wanting this for years since much of what I do doesn't really require me to be in an office.  I've had a laptop as my work computer since 2016 anyway and I duplicated the docking station and dual monitor set-up at my home desk. The docking station was provided by work; I bought the monitors. 

As much as I like driving, I am not a fan of commuting, so the reduced mileage on my cars has been welcome - other than the occasional trip back to the construction site in NH. Although that has been nixed since I live in PA and New England states have placed travel restrictions on those living in "plague states" like PA.  Yay... 

On the money side... hard to say.  If I were working in the PA office, I'd spend over $100/mo in tolls plus over 1000 miles of driving. So my monthly gas bill has decreased dramatically (NH trips don't count since I get reimbursed for those drives). The stress reduction from not commuting is hard to put a monetary value on.  

I've been working from home for several years now and I can't imagine going back to an office full-time.  Before the Great Suppression I'd head in to the office 3 days a month on average just for the social aspect of it and to kind of get out of the house, but I'm not really missing that too much.  How WFH works for you is going to depend a lot on your job function, your manager's managerial philosophy, and your own ability to keep yourself on target.

My wife has a call center job that she's doing from home - specifically she works for the state handing out our tax dollars in the form of food stamps.  The state very carefully monitors how much time she spends between calls, dictates when she can go to lunch, and the hours are pretty rigid.  Working from home is something that has been forced upon the agency, and they don't really trust their employees to not just screw off all day.  There's a lot of big brother-y stuff that they do in order to make sure people are keeping their noses pressed up against the grindstone.  My job function is a little more fluid where I'm tasked with figuring stuff out, making sure things are running smoothly, sitting in on meetings, coming up with new ideas, and stuff like that.  My company is also pretty heavily committed to a "work-life balance" and they've explicitly said that right now, as kids are going back to school, they understand that employees are going to need to take time out of their day to deal with kids and schooling.  That means that I can wander off to lunch whenever I like, I can take breaks as I see fit, and running out to pick up kids from school isn't a problem.  I had some training to listen to so last week I made a drive to and from Columbus and the 5-6 hours I spent in the car were spent catching up on that.  On the other hand, Deb needs to be at her desk from 0800-1630 every day and is told when she's allowed to take her lunch so they have coverage on the phones.

What that boils down to is that WFH can bring flexibility, but it's going to depend a little bit on the job and the manager.  My job is better described as "remote work" which means that I don't have to be at my house to be able to effectively do my job.  I've worked from the RV parked in the driveway of my in-laws house while we had a 10 day long visit with them.  I work from my workshop frequently.  I can take many meetings in the car, so I can work while I'm picking up kids.  I even managed to not need to take extra vacation days when my dad was in the hospital getting his appendix removed when we were down at the Rolex this year because I just sat in the hospital room with him, used their wireless network, and worked from the hospital room.  Deb pretty much has to be here, so there's not as much difference in the workday routine.

If your job is one where you work when you need to work - that is, if you're not specifically chained to particular hours and can could do work things at any time - you can time-shift your workload a little easier than when you're going to an office.  If I have something else going on in the morning, I can start putting a presentation together at 0600 when I wake up instead of waiting until 0800 and if that's the thing I need to do in the morning, once it's done I can go and do something else (drop off kids, grocery shopping, nap, build motor mounts, whatever).  But other jobs remain fairly tied to a schedule, so you don't get that flexibility.  That can be a good thing, though, because I've noticed that a lot of the newbies to the whole WFH culture are not very good about remembering to save time for themselves.  You might not have that 60 minute commute anymore, but that doesn't mean that you should now work from 0700-1800.  And just because the laptop is sitting there, don't neglect your family or your own downtime in order to "get more done".  For years, I've had my phone set up to not give me any notifications about work emails after 1700 on weekdays or at all on weekends.  You'll burn yourself out so fast and WFH will seem like a prison, not a freedom.

When you're sitting at home, you've got a million distractions all around you, so you've got to be pretty disciplined about it.  He says while he types a lengthy reply on a car forum instead of checking on that case he opened yesterday with his software provider.  If you can, set your work stuff up in a place that is dedicated to it.  Your brain will recognize that you have entered the "work space" and it will be more prone to staying in work mode once it's trained that work happens in this space but family happens in the other spaces.  In the office, you have all your coworkers' eyes on you in a way that sort of helps keep you honest, but at home there's nobody to see if you're spending time writing a procedure document or browsing craigslist. 

The part I like the best, though, is not having to deal with a commute.  Where the trip to and from the office could take 45-90 minutes depending on when I left and what traffic decided to do that day, now the only traffic jam I have to worry about is if the dog decides to come with me and follow from the front.  Instead of having to be showered, dressed, in a work mindset, and out the door by 0700, there are days that I just use my phone from bed (yes, I'm breaking one of my own rules there) for a while and don't actually sit down at my laptop until 0900.  I can wander down to the kitchen during the day and get dinner started, and when my work's done for the day I don't have to fight traffic or anything.  I'm just done.  Also, nobody's there to look at you like you're some kind of alcoholic when you suck down a beer with lunch.

The social aspect of work is another story, though.  It's a lot harder to stay engaged with your colleagues when you don't have the opportunities for chance encounters in the hallway or grabbing lunch together.  Before they closed up the offices and the bars and stuff, that was my primary motivation for going in to the office once in a while and we'd also meet for a happy hour once in a while.  Meetings are also a lot harder when you're not in the room with everyone else.  It can be hard to get a word in edgewise and when you're on a crappy speakerphone in a large office you can't hear people and people can't hear you.  When everyone in the meeting is attending via WebEx or whatever, it's a more level playing field but it can still be very difficult to inject yourself into a busy conversation.

On the net, I am a really big fan of remote work.  It takes the right type of work, the right corporate culture, the right manager, and you do have to train yourself to be able to do it effectively.  But once you're able to divorce the work from the location, you can get more done while also being able to have more of a non-work life.

I am an engineering manager for an internationally large engineering company.   

 The HMFWIC have decided that working at home is the new model for the company.   

As in they are cutting their rented office space in half and setting up the other half as "hot desks" to allow us to come in on days we need to have meetings with clients. 

The model is reserve a "hot desk" on line for the time you plan to be there.  Show up with  your laptop, plug into the keyboard and multi-monitor workspace.  

We have all been at  home since mid-march.   They say that productivity has gone up.   People are loving the hour or two of time they aren't driving to/from work that can be applied to family, exercise, etc.  I haven't shaved since March so I have that whole mountain man look going pretty good.

  Personally I am getting bored with working at home and look forward to being allowed trips to the office for meetings.   

The big worry is losing the personal connections with clients = hence the move to keep weekly in-person meetings going once the all clear signal is given in a few months.

Senior Tech Writer for a large eCommerce company. We already worked from home 2-3 days per week, so I have a nicer office setup at my house than I do at the office. 

Last day I was in the office was March 12th, day after the Jazz vs Thunder game when everything started snowballing. Offices have been officially closed since April. If I had to guess, we won't be back until February/March at the earliest. Everyone in the office can work from home so there is no point in bringing people in. Because different people worked different days from home, everyone is already used to Zoom meetings and such. 

And for us, once the offices open, I still won't go back at first. My girlfriend has RA so we are trying to be as cautious as we can regarding exposure to the general public. We are definitely saving a ton of money not going out to eat/drink 1-2 times per week.

The difficult thing for me is staying focused. Outside of meetings, basically nothing we do is "OMG WE NEED THIS RIGHT NOW!" We do two big releases of new features each year, in between we work on sustainability tasks, planning for future releases, etc. A call center type environment where you are expected to be ready to answer the phone when it rings should help keep you focused.  

I've worked from home in the past and have been doing so for the past 4-5 months. I love it. My responsibilities are fairly standalone these days and the sort of work I do benefits from long uninterrupted stretches of time, so for me it's a chance to get away from the distractions of other people and really dig into things. The bit of extra flexibility is useful as well - I'm finishing a woodworking project today, so it's very handy to be able to pop out to the garage for 10 minutes every couple of hours to put on another coat of poly.

I'll second what's been said here. Make sure you have a space for working, not just plopped on the couch. Develop the discipline to get up and walk away when you're done working, it's easy to just do one more thing. My personal grooming habits haven't changed, but I was never a suit and tie and gelled hair kind of office worker anyhow. I do get less grease on myself over the course of an average day these days, mostly by not picking stuff up to play with it.

I have gained an hour a day by not having to commute. At some point we'll open up our office again but it's my goal to work from home from now on.

I've been WFH since mid-March.  Our company has stated that we will not be going back into the office before summer of 2021.  I agree with many of the above tips.  Make sure you have a workspace that's specifically for work.  It helps to draw the line between work and home.  If you have family at home, a signaling system when you're on the phone is important.  I have a Mac, so my wife can text me when she needs something or has questions and I can answer her without leaving a meeting.  Or, I can let her know when I should be done.

Meetings have increased quite a bit to make up for the normal office talk.  I spend most of my day with headphones on.  Speaking of which, if the company gives you a WFH budget, I recommend headphones with a mic you can mute.  On mine, the headphones are noise canceling, cover my ears and I can flip the mic up when I want to mute myself.  It's nice because people on the call don't hear my chat binging messages at me or me typing away. 

Another thing to consider is your internet bandwidth restrictions (if you have any).  My provider has unlimited, but  couple of folks in other offices have had to change or upgrade their plans as they saw a significant increase in bandwidth from all the meetings. With the wfh, as a company we're looking into stipends to help offset any wfh costs.

I miss the ability to interact with folks face to face as I'm more of the "walking around management" type, but I don't miss the commute and love that I can grab a nap some days at lunchtime if need be.  The hardest (and I harp on my team about it regularly) is to not just work all day/night or weekends because they can't get out and continuing to work helps the boredom.  Granted, as a manager, productivity is up, but I worry about their mental health and burning out.

-Rob

I'll go against the grain.  

It's a struggle for me.  I'll be WFH through at least October per my company's current directive.  

I have no dedicated office space in my home, I've tried setting up a table/desk in the corner of my bedroom to have a place to close the door, but with two elementary aged kids, and a wife who also works full time from home, there's always interruptions, distractions, requests, and other items that make it hard to me to get "in the zone" of being focused on work.  Further, while my home is in a beautiful rural setting, my cell coverage is weak, so there's only certain parts of my home I can stand while talking with a client some days without the call dropping out.  This means if my wife is on a conference call in our bedroom, I end up walking into my kindergarden daughters bedroom with my laptop so I can carry on a call next to her barbie house and loft bed with the play kitchen.  :-/

Further, the work I do I can mostly be remote just fine with phone calls and emails, but I really miss the in person interactions with clients to read their personal reactions, vibes, feelings, etc. for the in depth reviews that occur (normally) at least once or twice a year that just doesn't work the same from a distance/electronically.  

I would love to continue some kind of hybrid once this is all over, but I really enjoyed the in person focus, and shared ideas I'd get from just being in a professional office environment with my peers.  I could say two days a week in an office reserved for scheduling in person meetings/planning/etc., with the other days from home being more the desk work and emails I can do from anywhere.  

If you have a wife/gf/kids living with you, consider a door with a lock to your office. I had to move my office to the basement. 

Otherwise no downsides for me. My entire team was 1,000 miles away anyway even when I did go into the office. Despite having a 5 month old, I get more sleep because I don’t have a commute and don’t have to shower/shave/groom myself every day. For a 30-45 minute commute, it adds 90-120 minutes back into your day. 

My girlfriend and I have been working in our 11x11 office since March.

I do IT - Sys Admin and she is an accountant for a property management company.

It's been great.  Occasionally I'll take a conf call from another room if she has a call at the same time.  My work is more flexible than hers.  

rob_lewis said:

I've been WFH since mid-M  I spend most of my day with headphones on.  Speaking of which, if the company gives you a WFH budget, I recommend headphones with a mic you can mute.  On mine, the headphones are noise canceling, cover my ears and I can flip the mic up when I want to mute myself.  It's nice because people on the call don't hear my chat binging messages at me or me typing away. 

Jabra?

stroker said:

I may be getting ahead of myself a bit, but I've been offered a job to work Customer Service for a major US bank from home. 

I work from home supporting the Contact Center infrastructure for a major US bank. I do a lot of work after midnight. It's 100% preferable to driving into the office. Being able to work from home is worth exactly ZERO in terms of salary, because I'm still getting the work done and saving money for the company in terms of power usage and real estate costs. Plus, having a geographically distributed support team makes us more available due to time zones and more disaster resistant. The trade off is that they'll call me at 2 AM if something breaks, because they know that I'm able to be online shortly to start working on it. 

I've turned down jobs because they wanted me to sit onsite in an open office plan. It makes zero sense for people who do what I do to have to be onsite and huddled together. If I liked people, I wouldn't have based my career on technology, I'd have based it on people. 
 

stroker said:

Do any other Hive members work from home?  Overall opinions as to whether it's preferable to driving in to work?  If so, how much is the ability to stay home worth to you in salary differential?

Been working from home for five years now (self employed). Honestly, when I was at my corporate job I would have gladly taken a 10% cut to work from home. Two hours of my life each day sitting in a car, gas, lunches in the cafeteria, and my overall health would have been changed by just working remote.

Now I have three meals a day with my family, I'm off work at five, and I can dress like a bum. It would take a heck of an offer (and money) to drag me back into a normal office every day again.

Johnboyjjb said:

No big deal. Get a comfortable setup. Create a signaling system for the wife and kids so they know when you can be disturbed and when you can't.

The other thing i would add to that would be to set up a routine for the work day.  Alarm clock and everything.  Helps separate the work day from non-work days.  Which, IMHO, helps keep one's sanity over being obsessed with work.

Which should be a reminder to not let your employer expect 24/7 response.  Not even close to that.

I work a firm 7-4pm, and shut it off.

But, like others, I'm finding I'm enjoying working from home.

In reply to stroker :

My wife works for a major US Bank from home. She started as a contractor and worked her way up to FTE ( more later)  She is now assistant to the VP in charge of security and technology.  
       FTE   Stands for full time employee.  Benefits include paid health care ( good health care)  paid Holidays and vacation (4 weeks)  and a really nice paycheck. With bonuses. 
     When you work from home you darn well better work.  The computer tracks everything you do. No you can't home school your kids or even have them around. Do not shop on line or chat with friends family or go anyplace you don't want reported too your supervisor.  In fact  use your own computer for anything not directly work related. 

My wife goes up in her office and for 8 hours she puts in work. She logs out for bathroom breaks. Coffee and lunch. 
   She goes up in her pajamas  and changes during a coffee break. Focuses hard for her 8 hours. 

In exchange for her dedication she has no commute time ( or costs) she wears what she wants and is comfortable. She takes time off whenever she needs to 

In addition to  the computer you will need a phone line dedicated for work. It's deductible. Get a head set.   Oh by the way if you have a dedicated space for work. A spare bed room or the basement etc. that too can be deducted. But it can only be a work space. 

xflowgolf (Forum Supporter) said:

I'll go against the grain.  

It's a struggle for me.  I'll be WFH through at least October per my company's current directive.  

I have no dedicated office space in my home, I've tried setting up a table/desk in the corner of my bedroom to have a place to close the door, but with two elementary aged kids, and a wife who also works full time from home, there's always interruptions, distractions, requests, and other items that make it hard to me to get "in the zone" of being focused on work.  Further, while my home is in a beautiful rural setting, my cell coverage is weak, so there's only certain parts of my home I can stand while talking with a client some days without the call dropping out.  This means if my wife is on a conference call in our bedroom, I end up walking into my kindergarden daughters bedroom with my laptop so I can carry on a call next to her barbie house and loft bed with the play kitchen.  :-/

Further, the work I do I can mostly be remote just fine with phone calls and emails, but I really miss the in person interactions with clients to read their personal reactions, vibes, feelings, etc. for the in depth reviews that occur (normally) at least once or twice a year that just doesn't work the same from a distance/electronically.  

I would love to continue some kind of hybrid once this is all over, but I really enjoyed the in person focus, and shared ideas I'd get from just being in a professional office environment with my peers.  I could say two days a week in an office reserved for scheduling in person meetings/planning/etc., with the other days from home being more the desk work and emails I can do from anywhere.  

I'll counter your counter thoughts.  Total up the money you save  from not commuting. The cost of a car, gas. Meals away from home, clothes, parking? Etc etc etc.  That will easily pay for a room addition. 
 

Yes you may be a social animal. But that chit chatting comes at a cost. Your boss sees that distraction. Measures the lost time.  Accepts it as a cost of business. 

Save the commute time and join a group who's interests you share. That's probably more than 10 hours a week. Join a  Club,  society, group,  use your time with people who share your interests. 
 

The thing I really hated was the getting hit up for a gift or party etc. I had my own demands for my money 

Mixed bag for me. I've been WFH since mid March like a lot of those responding & alternating WFH & in office by week since beginning of June. We are ending WFH after Labor Day. I'm an engineer & mostly autonomous in my job functions, so I don't need to be in the office for the most part.

It took awhile to get used to and still don't have all the "right" tools to do it properly, but we were told one afternoon that when we left that day we would begin WFH the next morning. So I had one night to be ready to WFH at 7:30 the next morning.  Also, no budget for equipment. I did buy myself a nice refurb desk chair & 2 new computer monitors (out of pocket but well worth it).

Biggest issue after that is I have to use a supplied device to get on our network which happens to be a hand me down tablet. So I wind up downloading to a jump drive to transfer files to my PC where I have a real keyboard, mouse & dual monitors so I can work more efficiently. Then I have to save my work to a jump drive & move it to the tablet to upload to the network. And then some things I just can't do on my PC because I can't get licensed software on my PC...So some things go better without the interruptions of being in an office and some things are more of a hassle & less productive due to "infrastructure" at home.

I would not take a pay cut to do this unless there was a serious savings in commute time and expense. I'm 30 minutes or less from my office unless there is a major shutdown on the interstate (which has happened about 2x per decade, so no big deal), so my commute time & costs are not a great potion of my available resources. If I lived far enough away from my work for this to matter or impact housing cost I wouldn't have good enough Internet service to make it viable. Also, employer would need to provide better equipment and/or a budget for such.

It took me about 6 weeks to get reasonably comfortable working from home and adjust to it, partly because that is how long it took to get the desk chair & monitors.  There are some nice perks like being able to do useful things around the house during lunch or sit outside if the weather is accommodating & things are kinda slow. 

Edit to add: It is also nice to work in shorts & a tee shirt.

Keith Tanner said:

I've worked from home in the past and have been doing so for the past 4-5 months. I love it. My responsibilities are fairly standalone these days and the sort of work I do benefits from long uninterrupted stretches of time, so for me it's a chance to get away from the distractions of other people and really dig into things. The bit of extra flexibility is useful as well - I'm finishing a woodworking project today, so it's very handy to be able to pop out to the garage for 10 minutes every couple of hours to put on another coat of poly.

I'll second what's been said here. Make sure you have a space for working, not just plopped on the couch. Develop the discipline to get up and walk away when you're done working, it's easy to just do one more thing. My personal grooming habits haven't changed, but I was never a suit and tie and gelled hair kind of office worker anyhow. I do get less grease on myself over the course of an average day these days, mostly by not picking stuff up to play with it.

I have gained an hour a day by not having to commute. At some point we'll open up our office again but it's my goal to work from home from now on.

Maybe not!!!!?!  ( go back to the office ) My wife works for a bank that had a policy of bringing employees into the office for work.
Since  the pandemic started they have done a 180 reversal.  Productivity is up 43% and costs are down 21% 

You can't argue the numbers. 

Brett_Murphy (Forum Patrón) said:

If I liked people, I wouldn't have based my career on technology, I'd have based it on people. 
 

Apropos to nothing....  I used to have that philosophy.  Several years ago I had a bit of a shift and realized two things which gave me more satisfaction in my job and also helped my career advancement generally:

1. Every single employee, from the CEO to the guy refilling the paper towels in the john is in sales.

2. Every job function in every organization boils down to helping people.

I've spent my whole career, since I was 18 or 19 in IT, starting with re-soldering flybacks on Wyse dumb terminals and fixing broken mice, working in sales, product development, light coding, sysadmin work, networking, telephony, training, technical writing, solution design and architecture, and consulting.  Not to sound too much like a self-help book, but when I'm applying those two principles to my interactions with my work, my coworkers, our customers, and vendors my job satisfaction goes through the roof and I really hit my stride and excel at whatever I'm supposed to be doing.

Alright, I'm off my soapbox.

stroker said:

I may be getting ahead of myself a bit, but I've been offered a job to work Customer Service for a major US bank from home.  I accepted. They're sending me a computer and I'm supposed to start at the end of the month.  I have a lot of feelers out for various jobs so I might have the option to work at a traditional call center at some point. 

 

Do any other Hive members work from home?  Overall opinions as to whether it's preferable to driving in to work?  If so, how much is the ability to stay home worth to you in salary differential?

Money wise  your pay should be the same as if you go in. But you don't have those costs. And it's more than gas.  My wife used to put 20,000 miles a year on her car commuting and etc. now it's rare to get 6000 how much longer will cars last?  Clothes? She used to budget a  hundred dollars a month. Now?  She hasn't bought new clothes in several years. 

Her parking used to cost $90 a month.  And on average she'd have one dent or door ding removed a year. 

I'm a design engineer for a big power tool company, I've been WFH since mid-March. It was a struggle at first to get stuff done but I developed a new schedule and I've been more productive at home now than I was in the office previously. We had the option to go back in office in June but my group decided that we all would rather work from home still, last I heard we are working from home at least until the end of the year.  I've had to go in the office only a handful of times since March to pick up prototype components or to do teardowns of competitive products. It's more of a pain to work in the office now, I have my docking station and both of my monitors at home. I really only need a better office chair for my home office and to better noise insulate my 3d printers.

I really like working from home now, I don't want to go back to office life. I can take the dog for a walk  or work on personal projects during lunchtime. I don't spend 35 minutes commuting each way so it's more sleep in the morning and more time for my personal life at the end of the day.  My wife and I were getting sick of being cooped up in Wisconsin this spring so we spent a week down at her dad's place in Gulf Shores, AL. I just knocked out CAD work from 7-4 and could sit out on the back porch and enjoy the sunny 85* gulf coast weather while it was 45* and rainy back home.

m4ff3w said:

rob_lewis said:

I've been WFH since mid-M  I spend most of my day with headphones on.  Speaking of which, if the company gives you a WFH budget, I recommend headphones with a mic you can mute.  On mine, the headphones are noise canceling, cover my ears and I can flip the mic up when I want to mute myself.  It's nice because people on the call don't hear my chat binging messages at me or me typing away. 

Jabra?

Jabra Evolve 75.  It's stupid expensive, but really nice.  I only have it because someone at my last company left and left the headset, so I snagged it.  I can talk on it all day with no loss in power. 

Couple of other things for me an WFH.  My son's moved out, so it's just my wife and I.  Plus, we have a little three bedroom house, so I've setup one of the rooms as my home office, with a door, which makes things easier.  I have several employees with kids and with school at home now, many of them are trying to do their jobs, be a teacher, take care of the kids, etc. throughout the whole day.  I have one who's 2 year old will sit in his lap sometimes when he's on conference calls and the 2-year old has only had one meltdown live on camera.  We all understood.  The company has been really good about understanding and I tell my folks regularly that I know things are hard and to do what they can.  Luckily, we do software development, so I don't have issues with folks slacking off because they're all geeks and love to code.  There have been a few issues with a couple of folks working late in the day (because their mid-day was consumed by kids) and not everyone being abe to respond, but it hasn't been a major thing.  We all understand.

If you've got kids at home, it can be a challenge, but be upfront about it that sometimes things will happen.  If you don't have kids at home, still keep it in mind for your co-workers that may.

-Rob