Work From Home
Are you one of the millions of people who have already discovered the rewards of working from home? Or one of those thinking about taking the plunge and wondering what challenges you will face? If so, this might be the book that will change your life. I have worked from home for nearly 20 years, so I am well acquainted with all of its advantages and pitfalls. Over 12 years I started, built up and finally sold a very profitable cleaning business, which I ran from a spare bedroom. I have also worked from home as an employee, advising small businesses on development and obtaining finance. All I had to do was sit down at my desk, get out my timesheet and immediately I was earning!
There is a lot of my own experience in the pages of this book, but do not just take it from me. I have also spoken to many other homeworking pioneers who have already blazed the trail and have generously shared their experiences, good and bad. From designers to B&B owners, from sales managers to craftsmen, they have explained their solutions to common challenges that you might face. You will save time and aggravation by not having to make the same mistakes they did.
We have all encountered our share of joys and mishaps, and our ways of handling them may vary, but we all agree on one thing; we believe that the pros of homeworking far outweigh the cons and cannot imagine ever wanting to work any other way.
I can organise my day as it suits me. If I have a deadline, I can set my alarm early and start work in minutes. Or I can do the laundry or last nights washing-up before switching on my computer. If my energy or enthusiasm dip during the day, I go for a walk, have a nap or head out to do some errands. Sometimes I just do not get into the swing of things until the evening, and then I can work on until I am ready to fall into bed.
I accept that there will inevitably be drawbacks - everyone I interviewed for this book mentioned dealing with issues like isolation, procrastination, and balancing work and family demands; but I still believe working from home is by far the best way to organise your life. It offers control and flexibility, saves time and fuel, and allows more time with friends and family. In other words, you have a far better quality of life when all your activities are centred around one location rather than two, or even more.
There are now estimated to be over 3 million people working from home in the UK, and the number is expected to rise steeply in the next few years. Given this, I decided to write a guide to working from home which can be used both by employees and by those who are self-employed. The defining factor here is not who pays your income, but where you earn it. Or as I read somewhere – work is what you do, not a place you go.Whether you run your own business or work for a large company, you will share experiences and be looking for solutions to similar challenges.
This is a down-to-earth, practical and friendly guide to getting the best from working from home. You won’t find those irritating photographs of models sitting on white sofas and idly tapping laptops that often accompany homeworking stories in the media! The popular media image is far removed from real people’s experience.
What you will find are true stories from the people who have balanced the working from home conundrum in their own unique ways and continue to do so. There are as many ways to do this as there are homeworkers, and the balancing act is ongoing. There are lots of options in this book to help you choose and develop the style which best suits you and your family. For example, many homeworkers need to have a door they can close to shut out distractions. Clayton, however, (see page 67) has discovered he much prefers to work in the living room where he is available to his young son. If this makes him fall behind with his work, he simply catches up in the evening when his son is in bed. Liam (page 83) uses ear plugs to keep out distracting sounds and help his concentration, whereas Robin puts on rousing music when he is starting to flag. Barry felt totally unable to work at home on his own and so took his laptop out to a local cafe´ with wi-fi (page 118). Completely different solutions, but they work for each individual.
Don’t feel that you have to read the whole book from beginning to end, start with the bits that are most relevant to you now, and then dip in and out as you have the time and need. If you are pushed for time, you will find a summary of the main points at the start of each chapter, plus a list of useful resources at the end so you can start making changes straight away.
Throughout the book I refer to the traditional workplace, the place you commute to, as the ‘office’. This is simply because it is easier to choose a word and stick to it, not because I am excluding the many people who work in a shop, restaurant, factory, workshop, hotel, studio etc.
I hope you enjoy reading this book, and that it will help you to get the best out of working from home.
Judy Heminsley www.workfromhomewisdom.com
Part1 - Sounds like a Nice Idea
WHY WORK FROM HOME?
It was not so long ago that going off to work each morning was the accepted thing to do, and anyone who worked from home was the exception. Times have certainly changed. Since the Office for National Statistics started collecting data on the subject in 1997, the number of people working from home has trebled. In 2005, its Labour Market Trends survey found that 3.1 million people, or 11% of the UK workforce, were working from home full time, and many more for part of the working week. And, apparently, many office-bound workers aspire to do so.
its a fact that...
In a survey carried out by insurance company Cornhill Direct in 2007, 69% of workers claimed they would work from home if they were given the choice. One in five were so keen to do so, they said they would even accept a pay cut.
Estimates of growth by 2012 vary from 22% of the workforce working from home to an astonishing 50% (predicted byWorkWise UK, which promotes smarter working practices). You may have considered homeworking yourself, and maybe you dismissed it as impossible, given your circumstances. But there are many reasons why working from home might improve your life, and all kinds of people manage to achieve it. This chapter aims to help you assess the realities of your own situation by reviewing the reasons so many people have already chosen home in preference to the office.
This chapter covers:
1. The reasons why more than 3 million people already work from home and why this number is set to rise sharply.
2. How you can work from home whether you are self-employed or working for someone else.
3. The advantages of working from home for you, for business, the community and the environment.
4. The downsides of homeworking – factors to consider carefully before making a decision.
5. A questionnaire to find out how prepared you are to become a homeworker and what kind of information will help you to gear up to homeworking.
My Story
Working from home was not something I ever planned to do; I just fell into it when my then husband’s idea to clean the windows of large country houses evolved into a rapidly growing contract cleaning business. We entertained the occasional sales rep. at the dining room table, where we also interviewed prospective staff. Deliveries of cleaning products arrived at the front door and our signwritten Suzuki jeep was parked in the street. I ran the business from home for 12 years, building up my client base and finally selling it as a going concern. At my busiest times I employed over 20 people part time, and it was all entirely manageable from that bedroom base. Since then I’ve also worked from home as an employee and running other businesses. I’m now in my fifth home office and it feels entirely natural to be able to organise my whole life – including the shopping, washing, cleaning, visiting family and friends, going to the hairdresser, and so on – from one place, and not to have to jam all the so-called ‘domestic’ or ‘personal’ bits into the brief times between and after office hours. I like the feeling that all these activities comprise my life, and that there is no artificial division between ‘work’ and ‘home’. I suppose that’s what we mean when we talk about work/life balance. I’ve worked in an office as well, but I much prefer working from home, and that’s how I see myself in the future, whether I’m working for myself or someone else.
Why work from home?
Over three million British homeworkers and rising can’t all be wrong, and the increase in numbers is not surprising when we look at all the diverse factors – economic, social and political – that are contributing towards fewer people travelling to a central place on a daily basis. Each homeworker has their own reasons, or combination of reasons, for making this choice. These range from the desire to lead a less stressful life and see more of their family to the need to cut the costs of transport at a time when housing and utility bills eat up more disposable income than ever before. Since so many more jobs can now be done remotely, it’s no wonder that concerns about pollution and climate change are also leading people to choose homeworking. Let’s look at each of these factors in turn.
USE THE TECHNOLOGY
The internet has allowed us to transfer information on a scale and at a speed never previously experienced. The advent of broadband has enabled huge files to be sent and received which previously would have required physical delivery. All kinds of jobs can now be done by people at home when before they would have needed to go to a library or company headquarters to access expert information. Sophisticated search engines mean we have access to experts wherever we are. Multinational companies can hold global meetings with videoconferencing and nobody has to get on a plane. Salesmen access up-to-date prices and stock levels on the company intranet before seeing clients, and submit orders online immediately afterwards. Mobile phones and Blackberries allow us to be in touch with colleagues all over the globe 24 hours a day. Run your own business, and with a professional website, noone will know or even care where you are based. Problems with the computer you rely on? Remote access means that IT support can take a look and fix it from a distance. And when you want to save all that precious information, you can back it up remotely to make sure it’s safe fromfire, flood or theft and complies with statutory requirements.
A Journalist’s Story
13 years ago Tim was a magazine editor in central London, coping with a stressful job, the pressures of city living and what appeared to be declining health. He was fortunate to be working for a forward-looking charity that agreed to let him work full time from home; an enlightened attitude at a time when homeworking was almost unheard of, the internet was in its infancy and there was no broadband. But he was able to take the opportunity to move out of London back to the rural area where he was born and in time, again with the consent of his enlightened employer and as the internet developed, to take on bits of freelance work, writing housing and regeneration reports. Eventually he gave up the job to become a freelance report writer. His business has grown in tandem with improvements in technology, particularly broadband, and he is now a specialist consultant in live/work schemes, subcontracting elements of his work to other self-employed professionals around the country, and working for clients all over the UK.
HAVE A BETTER WORK/LIFE BALANCE
Employees are fed up with wasting their precious work and leisure time in traffic queues and crowded trains when they could be at their desks or with their families. Daily commuting is tiring, stressful and expensive, and more and more people who are able to earn a living away from the major centres of commerce are moving out. Working from home gives you control over every aspect of your life, so you can forget about conforming to office culture and do your work the way you want, when you want. Ignore the phone ringing when you’re concentrating and nobody will be glaring at you. You can fit in all the pieces of the jigsaw in the way that is most convenient to you. I can’t imagine how I could possibly have run my life successfully over the last few years if I hadn’t been working from home. I have had all kinds ofcommitments throughout the UK, sometimes at short notice, but somehow, with the freedom I have in my working life, it’s all worked out and everything gets done.
A Webmaster’s Story
Inspired by the recent birth of her daughter and her love of the outdoors, Clare recently moved to the country from Birmingham. With her husband, she runs a website enabling teachers to find destinations for school trips. ‘The environment is cleaner and the way of life is more laid back. People here are easier going; people in cities are more stressed. I think the move has worked for me because I have reached a stage in my life where I want different things. I used to enjoy being part of a big office, and all the socialising. Now I’d rather be outside – I go running outside now, where I used to go running in the gym.’ As their work can be done at any time of day, Clare and her husband work three days and two evenings a week, and use the other time to get out and explore the countryside.
SAVE MONEY
Let’s face it, commuting today is extortionately expensive. If you drive your own car you have to pay for petrol and parking, possibly road tolls and the congestion charge, depending where you live. And don’t even think about exceeding the time on your parking ticket or stopping on double yellow lines to pick up a pint ofmilk on the way home. If you use public transport you have to contend with ever-increasing fares for ever-more crowded services, delays and unexpected cancellations.
Just participating in office life costs money. You want to fit in and not be thought standoffish or peculiar, so you go along for the coffees, the lunches and the drinks after work; maybe some meals and nights out as well. And you have to look the part, the smartly groomed professional by day, the fashionable party-goer by night. You need to have enough clothes to mix and match so you’re not the sad one who wears the same thing day in, day out, and have you noticed that suits and ‘office clothes’ always need dry cleaning?
If you have children or want to start a family, you will know that the cost of nursery care has risen consistently over the last few years, at well above the rate of inflation. Put that alongside the recent well publicised scares over the quality of care and security at nurseries and parents are becoming reluctant to pay nursery fees. How much better to juggle your work to fit around naps, playgroups and bedtimes?
Its a fact that...
in the five years to 2006, the typical cost of a full-time nursery place in England for a child under two rose by 27% outstripping inflation by nearly 20%.By 2007,the cost had risen by another 6%,to almost;8000 a year.
Source: The DaycareTrust, Childcare Costs Survey, 2007
We are all well aware of the astronomical price of buying or renting property, and that includes commercial property. BT have found that for every member of staff who works from home, they save an average of £6000 per annumon office costs. And if you’re self-employed, you probably wouldn’t be in business if you had to pay a commercial rent. Many business plans just don’t stack up if buying or renting commercial property is added in. Our cleaning business certainly wouldn’t have got off the ground if we had had to run it from business premises, and even after it became profitable, I never considered moving it away from home.
HELP FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
A few years ago there was widespread concern about the ‘food miles’ involved in flying food from places like South America and Africa to British supermarkets. Since then there has been a noticeable rise in the popularity of farmers’ markets and a strong emphasis on the promotion of local and seasonal produce.
But have you heard of ‘work miles’, or the distances clocked up by commuters travelling to and from their workplaces every day? If not, it may not be long before you do. In a world of congestion, pollution and high petrol prices, it’s increasingly illogical for thousands of people to spend hours every working day slogging to and from a place of work if they can do that work just as effectively from home.
With unusual and extreme weather events now regularly occurring in the UK, such as the torrential rain that caused the summer floods of 2007, there is more public debate about the effects of climate change and how cutting down on carbon emissions from driving could help to halt or reverse the effects.
Just a thought...
According to Liftshare, the organisation providing free carshare and transport information, if the average car commuter halved the daily 19miles they drive in their own car, 648 kilograms of carbon dioxide the amount that could be absorbed by 216 trees would be saved every year.
In 2006 David Miliband, the then Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, proposed the idea of personal carbon allowances or carbon credit cards. Consumers would have to carry a swipe card recording their carbon allowance, which would have points deducted each time they filled up with petrol or bought an airline ticket. Those not using their allowance could sell surplus points to a central bank,from which heavy users could buy more points. A feasibility study has recommended the scheme could come into use by 2012.
its a fact that...
in order to ensure that the UK plays its part in tackling climate change the government needs to commit to reducing the country’s carbon emissions by 80% in the new Climate Change Bill, and not the 60% that is currently on the table.
Source:WWF, 2007
CONSERVE OIL SUPPLIES
The western world has been founded on the availability of cheap oil and constant economic growth, so ‘peak oil’, when world oil supplies can no longer meet demand and start to decline, is a controversial and emotive subject. It is still refuted in some quarters, but even the International Energy Agency, which promotes affordable and reliable energy supplies for world consumers, announced in July 2007 that at some point in the not-so-distant future, probably by 2012, worldwide oil production will peak and then go into irreversible decline. It’s mind-boggling to anticipate the impact this would have on our daily way of life.
Its a fact that...
the UK has one of the longest commutes in Europe.The average commuter travels for 58minutes a day and one in ten people have a daily journey in excess of two hours. ‘Extreme commuters’, who commute at least three hours per day,make up 3% of the population.
Source: The RAC Foundation, 2007
If demand cannot be filled by supply, the law of basic economics will take over and the price of oil will shoot up. The most obvious and immediate effect could be that fuel would be rationed, as mentioned above, and that eventually driving would become too expensive for most people. It is vital we start to cut back on travel now and source more commodities locally in order to defer the peak oil crisis and set in motion the fundamental lifestyle changes which might be needed in the near future. Living and working in the same place might one day be a necessity rather than a choice.
Who can work from home?
Certain occupations lend themselves to homeworking because tasks are carried out primarily using the phone and computer equipment. Anybody in the IT industry has a head start on homeworking, as you can utilise your skills wherever you can carry and connect a computer. Sales and marketing roles are also easily carried out at home for similar reasons.
The latest development in call centres is enabling more people to work from home. Originally call centres were run from a large, centralised location in the UK, while later ‘offshoring’ moved the work to countries like India where labour is much cheaper. Companies in industries that require staff to have detailed knowledge of their market are now 'homeshoring’ and offering customer service positions to people at home in the UK who work flexible hours. Co-op Travel Group run the UK’s largest ‘virtual contact centre’ and employ more than 600 staff, who work at home. Texperts’ office is in the UK but they contract people living all over the world to answer the questions their customers send in by text.
SOME JOBS CAN’T BE DONE FROM HOME
Of course there are some jobs that just can’t be done from home and never will. You can’t work from home if you are a nurse, a lorry driver or a restaurant chef. It may be that there are materials and equipment kept at your place of work that can’t be moved to your home. Or perhaps you need to be in regular face-to-face contact with colleagues and clients at your office.
But in some cases it may be perfectly possible to re-organise your working day in order to spend some time at home and the rest at the office or out with clients. Or you might put a new spin on your existing skills and practise them from home on a self-employed basis. A chef could cater for events fromhis home kitchen, or develop a range of meals for sale to retailers. The lorry driver could start up a courier business run from a spare room. In Chapter 3, we look at how to get started as a homeworker whether you need to negotiate homeworking with your boss or come up with a way to make money at home through self-employment or starting a small business.
What’s so good about homeworking?
Sarah, a sales executive who works from home in a remote rural area, was so convinced that working from home was her best option that she persevered for a year, through many rejections and finally a gruelling three-hour interview, until she found an employer willing to give her a chance. Many of the people I spoke to while researching this book are equally enthusiastic about working from home. What exactly is it that we appreciate so much? Well, there are benefits not only for you as an individual, but also for businesses, for the community and the environment. Here are the advantages as I see them.
ADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING FOR YOU
- If you’re an employee you save money on travelling, childcare, buying and dry cleaning work clothes, on drinks, snacks and impulse shopping
- You gain hours every day by not having to battle to the office and back. You can use that time to sleep in, get organised, play with the kids, do the cleaning or whatever suits you best.
- You can turn out more better quality work when you’re not being distracted by colleagues and events in the office.
- Forget the stress of worrying about being stuck on public transport and arriving late, or of negotiating traffic jams and avoiding dangerous drivers on the motorway.
- You enjoy better work opportunities when you are not restricted to jobs within commuting distance – see Chapter 3 for how Sarah progressed from a low salary to being the family’s main breadwinner by finding a job she could do from home. You can make a living or earn pocket money even if you are tied to the house and retain your job even if you move hundreds of miles away.
- You can design your own life. At home you have greater independence and flexibility. Nobody is going to tell you when to go for coffee and what time to get back from lunch. You can take work calls outside office hours, or personal calls in office hours, and work at the times you are naturally more productive.
- You can be at home when a delivery or workman is due to arrive ‘any time between 9 a.m. and 5.30 p.m.’ and take the first available appointment to see the doctor and dentist. Getting time off for the school play and sports day is no longer a problem. Time for community activities is a real possibility.
- And maybe you’ll even become fitter, slimmer and healthier – no more tempting coffee shops and sandwich bars, no cream cakes on birthdays. Exercise can be slotted between tasks to benefit brain as well as body.
- Property costs and overheads are reduced by not having to house so many staff. According to WorkWise UK,Microsoft has been encouraging flexible working for its staff and in so doing has managed to accommodate 400 more staff at its Reading headquarters. The building of new offices has already been postponed by two years, saving the company about £1 million a year.
- Small home-based businesses avoid expensive commercial rents and mortgages and the associated utility bills.
- By showing themselves to be forward-thinking and open to innovation, employers attract highly qualified and highly motivated staff.
- Employers find it easier to retain these high quality staff and save money on expensive recruitment and training.
- All these savings enhance competitiveness in the face of tough competition from home and abroad.
- You and your neighbours all benefit from the security of having someone in the house all or part of the day.
- Your local area becomes more vibrant if people are around for the whole day and need to use local services. Homeworkers get their paper from the local newsagent and their stamps from the post office. Ideally they also have the time and inclination to do their food shopping locally too, enabling the survival of small food shops otherwise squeezed out by out-of-town superstores.
- The roads get less congested at traditional rush hours. Think what a difference it makes to traffic flow when the schools are on holiday – how much quieter would the roads be if up to 50 per cent of the working population were working from home?
- Cut down their work miles.
- Turn down the heating, get better insulation and switch off computers and appliances to keep utility bills down.
- Shop locally and maybe grow their own fruit and vegetables in some of the time saved by not commuting.
- When you work from home you lose your daily contact with colleagues and may begin to feel isolated. This side-effect of homeworking was mentioned by every one of the homeworkers I talked to when researching this book. Unless you are willing to accept that it’s entirely your responsibility to work out your own way of dealing with feeling isolated and building a supportive network, then you are unlikely to be happy working from home.
- Being in closer contact with your family, on the other hand, might cause friction unless you can agree and adhere to workable boundaries.
- You may find it hard to create a productive structure for the working day.
- Spending all your time in one area may feel claustrophobic, and you might miss the stimulation of a change of scene, your colleagues, and shops and restaurants.
- It can be difficult to keep up the self-discipline required to maintain a steady pace of work when nobody else is around to see what you’re doing.
- On the other hand, some people find it hard to switch off when work is so close at hand – you might become a workaholic addicted to your ‘CrackBerry’.
- Office-based colleagues may be resentful of those working from home, seeing it as an unfair perk open to skiving, so that you find yourself working extra hard (skipping breaks and working long hours) just to prove that you are pulling your weight.
- Sometimes managers are opposed to the idea, fearing a fall in the quality and quantity of work produced.
- Managers may regard home working as a perk which should be reserved for management, or fear for their own jobs as more and more staff work out of the office.
- You may get little support for the stresses of homeworking – internet and phone problems, feeling isolated, for example – when your colleagues are feeling like ‘it’s alright for some.’
- Team spirit might suffer if you are not all in the same place, so effective communications need to be set up to counter this, to share information and keep the consistency of your results.
- If you want promotion, you will have to work hard to stay at the forefront of the minds of those who make the decisions.
- With no public presence, home-based businesses can be almost invisible, making it harder to get established and increase your market.
- Your detachment from commercial centres also means that your access to business information and advice will depend on how good you are at researching what is available in your area.
- I already possess adequate skills to domy work successfully from home.
- My home is big enough to accommodate my work. (You do not necessarily have to have a spare room, but you do need to estimate just howmuch physical space is required.
- My family understands and acceptsmy need for space and peacewhile I am working.
- I have the self-discipline required to keep up a steady stream of work.
- I am sufficiently experienced to be able to carry out my work without regular support from others.
- I accept the need to take responsibility forgetting out andmeeting people.
- I trust my family to adhere to the boundaries I set up with them regarding work and home life.
- I am willing to learn about myself, to accept my weaknesses, and to adapt my habits accordingly.
- I already have, or have confirmed it is possible to arrange, the facilities essential for my work (phone line, broadband connection, access to post box etc.).
- If you are employed: there is already a high level of mutual respect and trust between me and my manager.
- If you are self-employed: I have investigated the legal requirements of working from home e.g. council permissions, licences, insurance etc
- Your best friend – making such a fundamental change as working from home is always easier when you have support from someone who believes in you, so talk to them now about your plans.
- Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live by Daniel Pink. Warner Books, 2001. Already regarded as a classic, Pink’s book analyses the shift from twentieth century mass employment by large corporations to the ‘free agents’, including large numbers of homeworkers, who are changing the face of politics and the family as well as business.
- www.homeworking.com - An excellent source of information on all kinds of homeworking, including a forum where you can ask questions and share experiences.
- www.motheratwork.co.uk - A webzine for parents that includes articles, job vacancies and a directory of employers with a good record of supporting employees’ work/life balance.
- www.careerathome.co.uk - If you are thinking about working from home, or need some information about a particular aspect of homeworking, this site has useful articles on a range of subjects, and a free monthly newsletter.
- www.workwiseuk.org - Work Wise UK is a not-for-profit initiative that encourages smarter working practices including working from home. Their website provides information on the benefits of home working and how they are promoting smarter working in the UK, including Work Wise Week and National Work from Home Day.
- www.tca.org.uk - The Telework Association is amembership organisation offering information to those who work flexibly. You pay for membership but nonmembers can read back issues of the electronic magazine for free on the Magazine page.
- www.liveworkhomes.co.uk - If you’d like to know more about the environmental benefits of homeworking, this readable site provides fascinating facts and figures to show how living and working in the same place can help to save time, money and the planet.
ADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING FOR BUSINESSES
ADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING FOR COMMUNITIES
ADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are reduced as homeworkers:
The downsides of homeworking
It has to be said that there are those who are less than impressed by the idea of homeworking. In an article about public transport and the horrors of commuting in the Daily Telegraph in July 2007, Boris Johnson declared that ‘the office is the natural habitat of Homo sapiens’ and ‘working from home is simply a euphemism for sloth, apathy, staring out of the window and randomsurfing of the internet’. I’ve also read a response to an internet article in which the writer declared that if you are able to work from home full time, you obviously have a useless job!
These outbursts are probably prompted by a wish to stir up controversy, but of course there’s a price to be paid for everything and I’d rather we look at the potential pitfalls of homeworking at the outset. What’s the price you pay for all these wonderful benefits of home working?
DISADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING FOR YOU
DISADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING IF YOU ARE ALSO AN EMPLOYEE
A Marketing Manager’s Story
Rachel works four days a week as a marketing manager and is one member of a team of homeworkers based throughout the country: ‘If I’m in the middle of something and want to concentrate, I don’t answer the phone. My bosses all work from home too and so they understand what it’s like. If they were office based, it could be awkward, as they might suspect me of skiving.’
DISADVANTAGES OF HOMEWORKING IF YOU ARE SELF-EMPLOYED
Is homeworking for me?
I hope that has given you an honest idea of the issues relating to homeworking. Without exception or prompting, all the homeworkers I spoke to mentioned that although there are pros and cons to working from home, they felt the pros far outnumbered the cons and they wouldn’t want to work in any other way. The aim of this book is to maximise the advantages and help you minimise the drawbacks. Having read about them both, do you think working from home might be a choice you would make? And if so, how close are you to achieving it?
QUESTIONNAIRE - ARE YOU READY FOR HOMEWORKING YET?
Now you’ve weighed up all the reasons for working from home, its possibilities and its pitfalls, this questionnaire will help you to look carefully at your own circumstances, from your physical surroundings to your own skills and experience. If some do not immediately appear to be ideal, there may be ways to work on them to give you the best chance of success. Think about each of the following statements and decide whether it is true or false for you. Answer as honestly as you can, not as you wish you were! Award yourself one point for each statement you believe is true for you, add up your overall score and read your assessment below.
Your score:
0-3 It seems as though it’s still early days to be thinking about working from home. Look closely at the statements that are not yet true for you. Is there anything here that you can start to work on? Perhaps you could start to develop your skills or plan to make changes to your home, even to move house. Go to Chapter 2 for more about the importance of personality and knowing yourself. Chapter 4 looks at the practicalities of adapting your home to accommodate your workspace.
4-7 You are well on the way towards homeworking but there is still work to be done. Try to identify the main areas you need to work on. One of the best sources of help is people who are already doing it, so tell your family and friends what you have in mind and listen to their experiences. See Chapter 3 for suggestions on approaching your boss about doing some or all of your work at home, and for business ideas if you would like to be self-employed.
8-10 You are almost at the point where you can move to working from home. Which statements are still not true for you? Are they factors you can change or are they dependent on someone else? Once you have checked the chapters mentioned above, take a look at Chapter 7 so that you don’t become isolated and Chapter 8 for details on establishing boundaries for work and home.
