Are you working from home, perhaps due to coronavirus restrictions at your workplace? Do you check your work emails from home? Answer business calls on your day off? Or even maybe just catch up on some office admin when you’re at a loose end?
If so, you could be doing damage to your health!
The coronavirus lockdown has meant more people have been working from home than ever before. Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that almost half of all of people in employment (47%) did some work at home during April 2020, the vast majority of which (86%) did so as a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
But if you were told you had the chance to work from home indefinitely, what would be your main motivation for working remotely? To avoid the commute? To get away from the office politics? To improve your work/life balance?
There are all sorts of reasons over 4 million of us choose to work outside of the office – a study from Together Mutual Insurance has just taken a closer look at why telecommuting is becoming ever more popular, as well as some of our work from home habits.
Here’s what it found…
How are you coping with working from home? We currently live in a world devoid of the daily commute, where the working day isn’t necessarily bound by the nine-to-five, and office politics are a thing of the past, other than the odd faux pas on a video or conference call.
If you’ve ever dreamed of working from home, lockdown may have shown you that it’s not quite the carefree employment existence you’d imagined – the commute has been replaced with a lie-in, the working day stretches well into the evening, an the office politics are replaced by the distraction of daytime TV.
You see, not everyone can cut it when working from home, it can take a lot of drive and discipline that you just don’t need when working in an office.
So before you hand in that remote working request, work out whether you can actually cope with working from home…
We’ve all witnessed first hand how the coronavirus crisis has had a positive impact on the environment – forced lockdowns have meant less travel and cut in the amount of industrial energy being used, all of which has combined to cut pollution and greenhouse gasses.
If we continue to work from home once the pandemic becomes manageable and life returns to ‘normal’, will this help us to continue to help the environment?
Could you manage a remote team? The coronavirus crisis has seen an increasing number of businesses offering employees the chance to work from home, as much out of necessity to help stop the spread of the virus as anything.
But now that these employees have been given the chance to work from home, it’s a perk that many will want to keep in place long after we’ve all returned to our offices and workplaces in one capacity or another – especially if it’s proven to be a success.
Would your business be able to handle a remote workforce in the long term?
Before the Covid-19, there were around 4.2 million of us enjoying the benefits of remote working – that’s 13.9% of the entire UK workforce, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
But the coronavirus lockdown has seen more employees than ever working remotely, with some businesses setting up entire remote workforces and call centres almost overnight.
And while we regular readers will know we’re right behind remote working, it’s not always as easy as it should be, especially if you have to work from a coffee shop, or don’t quite have the right set up at home.
This infographic from Turnstone, designers of inspiring office furniture, highlights the problems faced by anyone working away from the office.
The coronavirus pandemic will hit business hard, long after we’ve all gone back to whatever normal looks like in life after lockdown. As a business owner, this could see you looking to cut costs wherever possible, which could even mean giving up your business premises.
If that’s the case, you might need to think outside the box for a suitable solution – or maybe inside the box, that solution comes in the form of a storage unit.
The gyms and swimming pools are all closed because of the coronavirus lockdown, and while we can still get our for a daily run or a walk, that’s scant consolation for anyone who is used to going to the gym every week.
Thankfully, all is not lost and there is a whole range of exercises you can do at home, with or without any specialist equipment. But when is the best time to exercise? And should you do it all in one go or split your routine throughout the day?
January seems like the ideal month to work from home – dark mornings, dark nights, cold busy commutes – who wouldn’t want to avoid all that?!
But when you work from home, it can be all too easy to blur the lines between work-life and home-life, which can not only kill productivity, but can also make you feel like you never get a break from work.
So here are five top tips to separate business and pleasure.
Have you ever taken a conference call while commuting? How about when out shopping? Or lying in bed? If so, you’re not alone, as a recent study from career website eFinancialCareers found that over half of us (54%) don’t pay full attention when on a conference call.