Living IT, Learning IT, Loving IT

Working from home – the reality.

15 Mar 2010 2 Comments

by Sheena in Bespoke learning solutions, Home, RAF, Technology, Training

Everyone I know who doesn’t do this usually says to me ‘Oh you lucky thing’, or ‘Oh, yes ‘working’ from home’, with a heavy dollop of sarcasm attached to the word working.  Or I get the knowing look that means ‘yeah right, you spend your entire day shopping on the internet’.

The key word here is ‘working’, and then the assumptions that people make when you tell them you do this from somewhere other than a traditional office.

In this technological age there are very few reasons why working from home cannot be an effective and efficient way to run a business or carry out your role.

Rapidly improving wireless technology and broadband are putting paid to turning your laptop on half an hour before you need to do anything, or having to have bulky great printers cluttering up the place.  Scanners can now be so small you can fit them in your briefcase, along with similarly sized projectors. Just visithttp://www.takeware.co.uk/ReceiptAngel/ and have a look to see what I mean.

There are environmental positives to working from home – not least of which not adding to the daily grind of traffic, in my case blocking up the A19 & A64 around York.

Working from home is hard work in ways that some people don’t appreciate.  It is very difficult to absent yourself competely from the domestic trivia that surrounds you, the piles of washing/dirty crockery/ironing/grocery shopping or whatever that form 70% of my other job, being Mrs Whyatt.

It is also difficult to switch off.  But I try hard to find a balance between wanting to grow my business and having a relationship with my husband, even if I do want to check email at 11pm at night.

There are other down sides.  Like the sense of isolation that can creep up on you unexpectedly, or the frustrations that come from having lots to do, and sometimes nobody to talk over how you are going to do it.  However, I have found being part of Twitter invaluable in this.  Not only can I keep in touch with existing colleagues, who keep my spirits up and offer advice and guidance, but I create new relationships through this platform too.

In my case, there are many personal positives for choosing to run my business from a home office as opposed to a more traditional option.

My unique challenges when working from home are my ‘staff’ (two elderly lady cats and a year old golden retriever), and the fact that I live just by the end of the runway at an RAF flying training base. Both of which make conference calls in particular especially tricky.

I have to plan my time accordingly and attempt to only call clients when the flying programme is taking a break – but then find myself removing a grumpy cat from my keyboard, or a filthy chewed item of what was clean laundry from the dog in the middle of the call anyway.  On one memorable occasion, when delivering an online webcast for the Institute of IT Training recently, one of the cats tried to jump on my lap, missed, and drove her claws squarely into my bottom. Not quite in the script.

Apart from that (!) I find basing myself at home incredibly beneficial to my state of mind and productivity.

I am able to keep my costs down significantly and can pass that benefit onto my clients.

I can focus on a task and give it all my attention – brilliant when planning or carrying out routine tasks.

Great technology allows me to do pretty much everything that I would in a ‘normal’ office, and being close to York means I can get around the UK via public transport pretty quickly.

So if my only distractions are of the purring, panting and pilot variety, I think I am doing pretty well, and feel overall, my unique challenges ultimately enhance my workplace by making me work effectively and efficiently to cope with them.