Working from home is generally considered a great way to balance your work and home life, potentially increasing productivity and reducing stress levels – get it wrong though, and it can have the opposite effect and turn you into a stressed-out insomniac.
Could the negatives outweigh the positives when you work from home?
If you run your own business, you’ll appreciate the need to save money and cut costs wherever possible – but have you ever considered flexible working as a way to cut overheads?
Maybe you were forced into remote working during the numerous lockdowns of the last couple of years and found it saved your business some much needed cash when things were tight?
Employees may even have found a better work/life balance and bank balance through working from home.
If none of this sounds familiar, then it might be time to reconsider your thoughts on remote working. Not only do the UK’s flexible working laws mean more and more workers can benefit from working from home, offering the option could be the difference between hiring and retaining the best people and having a high turnover of staff.
And before you get into a blind panic about employees not pulling their weight while at home, consider that research from the London School of Economics found those who are offered flexible working are actually happier and more productive workers. Then consider the savings you could make…
The distractions come thick and fast when you’re working from home – daytime TV, housework, knocks at the door, and cold callers on the phone all do their best to break your concentration.
And then the cat seems to need feeding every five minutes – while there’s no doubting having a pet around the place can help alleviate the loneliness that can come with working from home, they’re not always great for productivity, but they’re nothing compared to having a baby around the house while you’re trying to work – so, if you’re a work from home parent, is it time you considered taking on a nanny?
Accounting is one of the most arduous tasks a small business owner has to face – all you want to do is get on with the day-to-day running of things but each month you end up getting yourself lost in a mountain of receipts, bank statements, pay slips and credit notes.
The good news is, there is accounting software out there that can help, you just need to know exactly what it is you’re after to find the right software to suit your business needs.
With just a couple of days to go until Christmas Eve, there’s a good chance many of your staff are beginning to wind down – unless, of course, Christmas is your busiest time of the year. If things do slow down over the festive period, you might be taking things easy yourself, or even on holiday already.
But what if you need people to stay switched on over the holidays? Especially in that ‘dead zone’ between Christmas and New Year? Here are some tips to help keep things ticking over.
Employees are being told to work from home wherever possible as part of the government’s ‘Plan B’ to tackle the Omicron variant of Covid-19 – a new strain that’s thought to be the most transmissible yet.
The coronavirus pandemic has seen more people than ever working from home, and many businesses now use a ‘hybrid’ working system, where employees spend some time at home and some at the office. By the start of December this year, more than two-thirds of staff travelled to work at least once.
More than a third (36%) of British staff did some form of remote working in 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics. And it’s a way working that has caused some strong debate – some have even suggested home workers should be paid less than those that travel into the office.
The truth is, working from home isn’t for everyone. But, if done correctly, it can be a great way of working and keeping a healthy work/life balance. To make sure you’re making the most of telecommuting, here’s how to work from home.
If the coronavirus lockdown forced you into working remotely, the novelty of being able to wear your pyjamas while working and holding meetings over a conference call may well have worn off by now.
You might even be welcoming some calls from some in government for us all to get back to the office. Even the morning commute might seem like it would offer some respite if you’re sick of working from the spare room.
If you’re hankering for a return to the communal kitchen and your open plan workspace, here are five things you might well be missing about working in the office.
As we’re all being encouraged to get back to the office, so the state of the space we’re going back to has become all the more important. Although we may have been cramped into a spare room or even the corner of the living while working from home during the pandemic, we were still working from home and able to reap the benefits of that.
But if we’re going back to the office, who wants to be cooped-up in a partitioned workspace? If you’re not interacting with colleagues, you may as well be sat in that cramped corner of the room at home.
So could an open plan office layout be the answer?
It’s been a very wet few days across the UK, and the rain looks set to continue. Although no severe flood warnings have yet been issued, thousands of UK homes and businesses could soon be damaged by flood waters.
If you’re in one of the affected areas, you need to act now and take the necessary steps to minimize the risk of you being washed out of your home, office, or both if you’re one of the thousands of business owners who run their operation from home.
If you do work from home this can be a disaster to both your personal and professional life, so you need to take steps to minimise the risk – the better prepared you are, the less damage your property is likely to suffer.
It’s no secret that many in government and and at the top of some of the world’s biggest companies want us to stop working from home and return to the office. It was only a matter of weeks ago that a government minister floated the idea that civil servants who work from home should be paid less than those that work from the office.
Meanwhile, Google has stated that it will be handing out pay cuts to US staff who opt to work from home full time.
We think it’s a terrible idea, and employees need to be treated like grown ups – just because you can’t see your staff, it doesn’t mean they’re not working. And what’s the point in adhering to a strict nine-to-five workday?
On the other hand, there is definitely a disconnect when working from home, and we do lose those moments of serendipity when a casual conversation turns into a winning idea for your business.
But it’s all about balance.