Working From Home - Keep it Professional, Enjoy the Benefits
A lot of people are working out of a home office these days and the reasons vary. Some are self-employed, others are in sales and spend a lot of time traveling, some are lucky enough to work for companies that let them “telecommute” to save on office space, and there's the rare company who does so to accommodate a valuable employee who has children and needs to be home.
Working from home also provides cost-saving benefits such as spending less money on gas, less wear and tear on your car, reduced clothing and lunch expenses, and there can be the added bonus of cutting down on pollution. Traveling salespeople do not apply.
All these benefits are great, but working from home can also bring increased distractions. You might have a tendency to throw in a few loads of laundry while you are downloading some software or waiting for an important phone call. Or, you might want to run the vacuum cleaner and dust while you are waiting for a fax to go through.
In order to work from home, you must be very disciplined. You have to act in a professional manner just as if you were in an office outside of the home. Depending on your job, this might mean getting dressed and not working in your pajamas. What if your boss drops by?
A great example of a professional home office was run by my former accountants, who had an office at home in their basement. They had remodeled it with state-of-the-art computer equipment, and if you didn’t know you were in the basement, you would have thought you were in a first class office building! Every morning they put on their business suits and worked from 9 am until 5 pm. They were always ready for a client to stop by, or to go off to a business meeting. They ran their home office like a real business. They saved a lot of money by not paying for additional office space, and therefore they were able to keep their overhead low.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati