Over recent years an increasing number of people have started to work from home. Today with the problems of coronavirus and self-isolating the need for home working is so much greater. As someone who has learnt to work from home here are some of the lessons, I have found useful.
The most important lessons about working from home are to be organised and disciplined. So:-
- Make sure you have more than one means of enabling people to contact you. Have a landline and mobile phone. Make sure people can message you and of course have a business email account as well as a personal one. Lastly, make sure you are on Skype or Zoom or Facetime or any other facility that gives you access to face to face communication.
- It’s better in working from home to have another laptop to work from. Having a dedicated business laptop means you won’t be distracted by personal emails and other interruptions through the working day.
- Being at home working naturally means you can be flexible as to exactly when you are at your desk. Whilst this flexibility is helpful it’s also important to be organised and structured in your day to day management of your time. Remember also that by working from home you have saved all of that wasted travel time to and from the office. That downtime has been released for your own use be it for work or for social breaks.
- Make sure your working environment is comfortable. Feel good about the place you are working in, have the right desk, computer and most important of all a comfortable chair.
- Working from home can lead to family and friends thinking they can come and see you for a chat or some social activity and it’s important that they appreciate that when you are in your office you are at work. In the most tactful of ways you need to ensure they understand you are working and for them to be sympathetic to the fact that when in your in the office you are there to work not have social chats.
- On the issue of social activity, one of the benefits of working in an office with others is that throughout the day there is social interaction and this loss of social contact needs to be replaced somehow. Best to organise your day so that you can go and socialise by, for example, going swimming, going to the shops, calling on people nearby for half an hour. This is important but remember it needs to be organised rather than random.
- Breaks, as with working at the firm’s offices, are a necessary thing to plug into the days agenda. Make sure you have a coffee break scheduled and a lunch and afternoon tea break.
These are just some of the things that will help your time working from home more pleasurable.
Kenneth Andrew Executive Coach
I have been involved with many Executives seeking this change and it can be done. If you’d like to talk with me, please mail or call on 077104 88282 or email me at kenneth@kennethandrew.co.uk.
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