Why You Must Come Home From Work
Remote doesn’t mean home, and it never really did
Over the last few years, “remote working” has quietly morphed into “working from home”. They are often spoken about as the same thing, but they are not. And confusing the two is quietly damaging productivity, mental health, and work–life balance for both young professionals and senior managers alike.
At The Glasshouses, we see this every day across our suburban locations in Dún Laoghaire, Blackrock and Sandyford. Members consistently tell us the same thing:
“I get more done here in one day than three days at home.”
That’s not nostalgia for old office life. It’s human reality.
Remote working ≠ working from home
Remote working was never meant to mean your kitchen table, a spare bedroom, or a laptop balanced beside yesterday’s laundry. Remote work simply meant avoiding the city commute, not avoiding a workplace altogether.
A local, well, designed office close to home gives you:
- Focus
- Structure
- Human interaction
- A clear beginning and end to the working day
Working from home removes those boundaries entirely.
“Your home is where you LIVE, not WORK”
As Chad Gilmer, Managing Director of The Glasshouses, puts it: “Your home is where you live, not where you work. It’s very important to come home FROM work.”
That sentence lands harder when you think about managers, team leads, and parents.
Imagine finishing a difficult staff meeting. Tensions were high. Decisions didn’t go your way. The call ends.
You close your laptop…
…and immediately walk into the kitchen where your partner and children are waiting for dinner.
There is no decompression, no mental transition, no coming home from work. Just emotional spillover.
European workplace research increasingly highlights this exact issue:
- Blurred boundaries between work and home increase stress and burnout
- Lack of physical separation reduces recovery time after stressful tasks
- Always, on environments increase anxiety and emotional fatigue
People need a psychological commute, not just a physical one.
The importance of “going to work”, and coming home again
A simple 10–15 minute commute by car, bike or on foot does something powerful:
- It signals the brain: I’m going to work
- It allows mental preparation in the morning
- It provides emotional decompression in the evening
That transition matters far more than people realise.
When you arrive at a real workplace:
- You sit properly
- You focus better
- You communicate more clearly
- You finish tasks faster
And when you leave, you leave work behind.
Humans are not designed to work alone
We are social creatures. Work is not just tasks and emails. At The Glasshouses, members constantly tell us the unexpected benefits:
- A quick chat over coffee sparks a new idea
- A casual conversation leads to a collaboration
- Seeing someone’s expression changes how a conversation unfolds
- A handshake still matters
You cannot replace eye contact, body language, and shared space with video calls.
Great teams are built in moments between meetings, not just inside them.
Suburban offices: the best of both worlds
City centre offices aren’t for everyone. Long commutes drain energy. But the solution was never isolation at home.
Suburban workspaces offer:
- Short, stress, free commutes
- Professional environments without city pressure
- Flexibility without loneliness
- Structure without rigidity
Whether it’s Dún Laoghaire, Blackrock or Sandyford, the principle is the same:
close to home, but not at home.
The Glasshouses perspective (yes, we’re biased, but we’re right)
We believe work should:
- Be productive
- Be human
- Have boundaries
- End at a door you physically walk through
Working from an office isn’t about control or old, school thinking. It’s about protecting mental health, improving output, and preserving home as a place of life, not labour.
Remote working works best when:
- You avoid the city commute
- You work locally
- You still go somewhere designed for work
Chad’s final thought
You don’t just need to go to work. You need to come home from work.
That moment, the walk, the drive, the mental switch, is not wasted time.
It’s what allows you to be present, calm, and human when you step back into your life.
And that’s something your home can never give you if it’s also your office.
