My home work assignment for employers

Pursue more remote opportunities for people with visible and invisible disabilities

I have read with keen interest all the recent articles addressing how the pandemic has been a boon for remote work and people living with disabilities and chronic conditions.

I truly count my blessings every day.

For the last three years, even before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, I’ve been working full-time remotely. Here, in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, for a major company headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about a half hour from where I grew up in Monticello.

This isn’t to say that I live with a disability. However, I do live with a chronic illness. Yeah, in case you haven’t followed my writings for the past 22 years, I am living with Multiple Sclerosis. So is my wife, Jennifer.

Working remotely as a creative writer isn’t because of my MS. Rather, this is how the job was offered to me, as well as countless other colleagues at Ruffalo Noel Levitz. RNL has long recognized the value of a remote workforce.

Remote work makes so much sense for so many reasons, and it’s unfortunate that it took a worldwide pandemic to open the eyes of so many other employers to see the benefits of remote work for employees as well as for the company’s bottom line.

Make no mistake, I’m not here to write about the pandemic or the financial well-being of corporate America. It’s to continue advocating for making remote work a reality for people living with disabilities and chronic conditions.

As people are getting vaccinated, the working world is starting to open up and function more as it once did. But it now must continue pursuing the unlimited potential reflected in remote work opportunities for people who have visible and visible disabilities.

Consider this:

“It says a lot to an employee when the company opens the door to flexible work options. It means even more to those of us who are living with chronic conditions.

This opportunity shows each of us that our voice was heard. Our employer believes we have a lot to offer, understands what we are living with, trusts us implicitly to get the job done well, and respects our time and how we govern it.

In grateful appreciation, we respectfully return the favor by ensuring that our time is well budgeted and well spent.”

This is an excerpt from the article, “Remote Work: More Than a Perk for Pros with Chronic Conditions,” I wrote for Remote.co. I encourage you to read the full article for the five ways producing on our time works exceedingly well for those of us with chronic diseases.

Here’s the kicker: I wrote this essay in late 2017, and it was posted in 2018, about four months before I interviewed for my job at RNL and more than two years before networks first reported about a strange virus that soon shut down the world as we once knew it.

It’s now 2021, and people worldwide are collectively facing a future of unimagined uncertainties. But here are two things I know for sure: my MS isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and neither is the need for a strong remote workforce that includes highly qualified people who are living with disabilities and chronic conditions.