Top Tips for Working From Home
Look back a year and working from home was not the norm. It was something freelancers did a lot and most other people did very little. Fast forward to October 2020 and it is something most of us a very familiar with. September saw a move to return to the office but that has gone backwards again and a lot of people are back in the spare room, home office, lounge, kids bedroom, kitchen table…and many other places. There are a lot of challenges about working from home and there are well publicised but what about some ways to deal with them? Well here are a few top tips and hacks to try and make things a bit better.
Know Your Software
Not everyone gets on well with technology but working from home often depends on it. A big tip is to embrace the tech, don’t be shy of it. Take some time to watch YouTube videos on how to use Zoom and Teams or anything else you need to use to do your job and communicate. If you run a business and are worried about your staff working from home, there are companies out there that can help organise communication software like this. Companies like https://omni3.co.uk/ specialise in business communications and can help make working from home as smooth as in the office and be able to move between the two. If the company, you work for is winging it with mobile phones and free video conferencing packages maybe its time to nudge them towards some professionals!
Seating Can Be Everything
When Covid 19 first hit people set up from home on kitchen chairs, sofas and pretty much any kind of chair they had. Over time this type of seating will cause issues if it hasn’t already. Being productive and happy working at home has a lot to do with comfort and posture. A poor chair can not only cause backpain and other obvious issues it can also just increase stress levels and make you short tempered without even knowing why. Getting the right chair can make a massive difference to your day so it may be time to ask your boss for a chair budget! If you work for yourself, what are you waiting for? It’s not just seating, there are a number of things you can do to help make working from home more comfortable in terms of posture, sitting position and computer use.
Mental Gaps
This may sound odd but one of the big issues with working from home is that there is no gap between finishing work and being at home. Regardless of how awful many people’s commutes once were they put a full stop between being at work and getting home. For many people this means they are still quite elevated and stressed when they try to switch to being at home with kids, or just trying to relax.
Building mental gaps between work and home can really help. These gaps can be wide ranging. For example, try finishing work and walking round the block a number of times, or to the park and back. A 20-minute brisk walk can really help. If you have a dog a walk is even easier! If you can’t do that, try to plan in food shops and errands at the end of the day so you have something to break the line between work and homelife. If you can’t leave the house do a work out video or Yoga class. Basically, find what suits you but building that gap is a very helpful tool.
Timing
Working from home allows work to encroach on our home lives. What used to be between 9 and 5 now seems to start at 7 and keeps going into the evening. E mails, work WhatsApp groups, Zoom calls and more all seem to now drag on and it isn’t healthy. Try to speak to your team, boss, staff etc and create sometimes when it all stops. Working from home can be very productive but it can also be intrusive without being in anyway beneficial to the business.
Is the Office Dead?
There are a lot of businesses considering the future of the office. For start ups and very small businesses an office is a big investment and having it empty for potentially months to come seems a waste. But not everyone can work comfortably from home and that is important for businesses to consider. Ultimately we can’t predict how this is going to go but in many ways working from home can be great; its good for the environment, people can see family more, eat cheaper and remove themselves from a lot of office politics. Businesses will no doubt want to return to offices in the most part, but a combination of home and office may end up being the norm so getting it right now is a good thing.
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