Working from home - How to do it

Introduction

Setting up an office at home can be the route to a higher degree of freedom in your working life than you ever imagine was possible within the structure of an ordinary career, but it is not something that should be tackled without a good degree of consideration. If you get the planning and execution of your office space wrong, it may turn your dream of a life free from commuting into a nightmare where you could be trapped in a space that is unwelcoming and unproductive.

If you are setting up a business from home, the temptation will be to cut corners wherever you are able to save on costs, but this could turn out to be the most serious of false economies. Not only will it be difficult to work in the surroundings of an office that has been poorly-designed, but you will also be stuck in a workspace that allows little flexibility and prevents you from realising the potential of your new business.

It is also important that the psychological change of working on your own for a significant part of your week is taken into account when you are considering setting up to work full-time from a home office. Making sure you have considered the implications of working on your own and having strategies in place to keep in contact with people will make you happier and could open up new business opportunities.

Where should the home office be?

Of course, this is a question that depends largely on your individual property, as well as your individual circumstances.

Really, the best way to approach this is to consider what you need from the office, and see what part of your property is best-suited to the task. There are also some guidelines that you should make sure you follow to ensure that your office is not only successful as a place in which to work, but also works in the context of the rest of your home.

The most obvious place for a home office is, of course, in a spare bedroom. On many occasions the smallest bedroom in a property is not really big enough to function as a bedroom. Many new-build properties, particularly in city and town centres, have ‘box’ rooms that are too small to fit in a double bed, let alone any further furniture. Often, single people or couples have opted to buy a two-bedroom property in order to have some more space and to make their property more attractive to the resale market, and the second bedroom can make the perfect spot for a home office.

Of course, there are other options available should all of your bedrooms be occupied, and some of them could be a preferable in terms of keeping options open for the future use of bedroom space. Some home workers will look to converting their loft space for their new office, and if the space lends itself to conversion, this can be one of the best ways to gain a home office without ‘losing’ one of the rooms in your house. You will need to check on whether you need to apply for planning permission in order to convert your loft space (often you will not need specific permission, but check regulations in any case), and whatever the situation you will need to get the building work inspected and approved. Prices for a simple loft conversion start around £20,000.

Those people who do not have attic space that is appropriate for conversion into an office, but who would still like to add a room to their property may find that a garden office is the solution to their needs. As well as having the advantage of not involving extensive structural work, this option can be much cheaper than converting loft space. You will need to consider the provision of power, light, heat and telephone lines along with an internet connection, but this does not need to cost the earth. There are even possibilities to use renewable sources of energy to power this additional garden room with solar panels and/or wind generated electricity, cutting down the carbon footprint of your office. You will need to consider the security aspect of having a separate building in which all of your work equipment and records are stored, and you should make sure you have adequate insurance cover. Considering all of this, the cost of a garden office can be considerably less that converting a loft space. A freestanding hardwood garden office big enough for one person costs around £5,500.

If you are considering a garden office, make sure you use a structure that is designed for the purpose. Converting a garden shed into an office may seem like an ideal way of saving costs on this, but you are likely to find that it is drafty, cold, not secure, and may be damp enough during cold or wet weather to damage electrical equipment.

Finally, if at all possible, you should avoid putting your home office into a cupboard or similar storage space in your home. Not only will you find that you will quickly outgrow the space that you have in the cupboard under the stairs, working in this environment for more than a few minutes at a time will prove to be a real trial. A little extra cash spent on your home office will pay dividends in your time, productivity and happiness.

Building a home office

Most people have not had to think about designing their place of work, so it is important not to approach this part of the process of getting your home office set up as purely an exercise in interior design. Not only will your home office need to function properly as an office environment, with all of the things you need close at hand and adequate storage facilities, but it will also need to be somewhere in which you are happy to spend eight hours a day, every day.

While people adapt well to their surroundings, and many offices in the corporate world are by no means ideal for working, this is likely to be the only time you have a free hand in designing your own workspace.

Natural light an important factor, and trying to make sure that you can work by daylight for as much of the day as possible will help to prevent fatigue. If you are able to make your desk face, or at least be in sight of a window, it will prevent you feeling like you are trapped inside all the time.

The pace of change in office technology is rapid, so if you are able to invest in equipment from the better end of the market, it will allow you to future proof your office to a certain extent. The onward march of progress ensures that no technology is beyond improvement, but this does not mean that your office will be obsolete within months. If you stick to getting good-quality, commonly-used equipment and software, you will have little problem functioning as a modern office.

When setting up a home office is done on a budget (as in the vast majority of cases) it is worth directing a little extra money towards things like a good internet connection, a secure and reliable system of backing up your files, and a good quality desk and chair.

To contribute to the perception of clients and suppliers that your company is far bigger than it really is, you could also consider employing a satellite office company. This is a service that provides you with a ‘virtual’ office environment, including telephone answering and out of office management, a mail address that could be in the centre of a major city, regardless of where your home office is located, and even access to meeting rooms should you need them.

Finally, the other important thing to remember when you are putting together your home office is to try to keep it separate from the rest of the home. This is important when it comes time to stop work each day and allow yourself to switch off.

Advantages

The reason that most people want to work for home is to gain time. This extra time can be spent with family and friends, devoted to other activities. Working from home could allow you the flexibility to not only see your children before they go to bed each night, but to be at home when they leave for school in the morning and when they get home in the afternoon. The benefits not only to your own wellbeing, but also to your children and to your relationship with them, are unquantifiable.

Working from home can also be good for your health, and theoretically you should be less stressed at work. Working from home does not instantly make your job role less stressful or mentally taxing, but imagine how improved your frame of mind will be if you don’t have to deal with either traffic jams on the roads or overcrowded trains just to be able to get to work. Going hand-in-hand with the time you will save by not commuting in to the office, you should also be able to indulge in a little more sleep than might otherwise be the case, which can work wonders for your general health and wellbeing.

You should also be able to save money by working from home. When you sit down to add up everything you spend on just going to work, it is quite alarming. Not only do we in the UK have to pay exorbitant fares for travel on public transport or just to tax and run our cars, but if you buy a coffee on the way to the office, a sandwich or salad at lunch, this can easily reach more the £10 per day. Saving that money by eating at home and making your own coffee will make you feel even better!

Not travelling in to the office will also make a difference to your personal carbon footprint. Even though many people use public transport to get to work, not travelling at all will mean that you could run a carbon-neutral office from home.

For further details of the legislation detailing your rights in requesting being allowed to work form home, and to download forms and questionnaires for both yourself and your employer, click here.

Things to look out for

While there is little doubt that working from a well-prepared and thought-out home office can give you huge gains in terms of lifestyle, family, health and finances, it is not perfect for everybody. Even for people who have dreamed of making their home their place of work for years, it is vitally important to make sure you consider what you are giving up by working in an office with other people.

One of the most common problems is the isolation felt by people who work on their own at home. If your job role is quite insular, you may go the whole day without interacting with anyone else, and even those who have roles that are more interactive with clients and other people may find that they miss the daily interaction with others. The value of the human contact must not be underestimated, and people working from home should make the effort to get out to networking, social and professional events whenever time and opportunity allows. This will make you feel more connected to colleagues and your role on a grander scale, and some of the best business opportunities come about by talking to like-minded individuals.

It is also essential that you allow yourself to switch off and step away from the office. Just because you have your office at the bottom of the garden or up in the spare room does not mean that you have to be available to work 24 hours a day. This does not mean that you should not work late if you have a project to finish or a deadline approaching, but you have to keep control. Make sure you have an answer machine in place, consider switching off your mobile phone after business hours (particularly if you have a dedicated business number) and resist the urge to check your emails at all hours. Most importantly, make sure you are able to physically close the door to the office. When you make a physical change from work to leisure, this allows you to put work out of your mind until the morning.

Working from home can also lead to a kind of ‘cabin fever’. If you work and live in the same building, it is important to make sure that you plan frequent trips outside and away from the same location. Even if this is just to walk out to buy a newspaper, picking children up from school or doing some exercise, the importance of a change of scenery is hard to overstate.

Conclusion

Being able to work from home is an opportunity that previous generations were not able to enjoy, and perhaps in the future the working culture will mean that employees will have to spend even more time at work in order to make an impression. Setting up a home office should be an experience that opens new opportunities to you, as well as allowing you more time to spend on the things that are personally important to you.

At the same time, rushing into home working without preparation or planning could result in you feeling trapped, isolated and resenting your work. More importantly, it could also leave you enjoying your home less. If you are properly prepared and you have the opportunity, make the move – it could change your life!