There are so many benefits to working from home: There’s no lengthy slog through rush-hour traffic, which often means more time with family or friends. You don’t have to smell your co-worker’s tuna fish sandwich or burned popcorn. You can work where and how you want, often with a more flexible schedule.
For a lot of people, working from home sounds like a dream. But before you set up shop at the dining room table, there are a few things you should know, do and think about. We talked to a few telecommuters in the area for advice.
Is your company set up for telecommuting?
As a computer programmer, the company Rachel Schoenbaum Jaffe works for has the technology and systems in place to support telecommuting.
The company has video conferencing and collaboration software in use. In addition, to help Jaffe and other employees be productive, the company provided a monitor, docking station and other equipment as part of her employment package.
Not all companies are so supportive. Before you propose a telecommuting arrangement, find out if there are other people in your office or in similar positions who work from home.
Are there systems already in place for conference calls, video conferences and collaboration? How is productivity assessed or tracked? If your company puts a high value on “face time” and in-person collaboration, full-time telecommuting may not work well or be an option.
** Need to convince your boss to let you telecommute? Here's advice. **
Erin Hawk, who owns an international education organization, works from her home in the Alexandria area and also manages people who work from home.
“I think you have to be honest with yourself, your work environment and your employer. As an employer, you have to build a culture of trust with your employees and you have to keep it real,” she said.
Before starting a telecommuting arrangement, both people should have an understanding about how frequently they should communicate, how quickly they should respond to emails, time-lines and more. Especially at the beginning of a telecommuting arrangement, “I think employees and employers have to be really good about communicating what their needs are,” she said.
Lisa McLaughlin, who owns a products company in Alexandria and works from home, also manages a part-time assistant and several remote contractors. “Another thing to remember is that if I was an employee switching to work from home, I’d really appreciate my manager telling me what they expect.”
Evaluate Your Personality
Telecommuting can be lonely. “If you generally like interactions with other human beings, you have to make an effort. It’s not just going to happen while you’re sitting in your house,” said Jaffe, who has been working from home for the past nine years.
To combat the loneliness, she goes on runs with members of the local Moms Run This Town group and makes efforts to connect with friends.
“But I am by myself all day. It can be really lonely and isolating. You have to be really good at reaching out to people.”
Jaffe suggests doing a trial day or two of telecommuting before committing to it full time. “You might find there are challenges to it that you weren’t expecting,” she said.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself:
• Do you get distracted easily, or are you disciplined and find it easy to focus on work?
• Do you thrive working alone, or do you routinely seek out other people at the office to collaborate on projects (or socialize)?
• Can you set boundaries? While work-ing from home can boost work-life balance, work can very easily creep into non-work hours.
• Is your family, spouse or roommate supportive of you working from home? Will it lead to conflicts over how you use your time?
• Even if you hate your commute, do you like the structure that going to an office provides?
Also consider the people who may be around you: Is your spouse also going to be working from home? Will you drive each other insane? If your kids are home in the afternoons, will their noise or needs be a significant distraction?
? Your answers to those questions can give you some guidance in deciding if telecommuting is the right move for your career.
Evaluate Your Space
Whether you’re working from a corner of the dining room table or have a spare bedroom, having a dedicated work space free from distractions during work hours is critical to your telecommuting success.
“Start mentally thinking about that as your work space, even if it’s not a room,” Jaffe said.
When Jaffe and her husband started looking for a new home a few years ago, Jaffe’s work played a role in choosing a house. “I looked specifically for a home where I could have a good home office and somewhere I could be comfortable,” she said.
For her, that meant having a spare bedroom that did not do double-duty as a guest bedroom. “I didn’t want to have an office/guest room, because I didn’t want to share that space.”
She also didn’t want to be in the basement. Her office now has a dedicated desk, file cabinets, natural light and everything else she needs to be both productive and comfortable at work. Like Jaffe, McLaughlin has a dedicated space in her home as an office. Custom, built-in desks and shelves on her top floor space have helped her be productive.
Hawk is also working from a spare bed-room. “To me, it’s always been import-ant to have a door that I can close,” she said. Her setup includes a desk, printer, scanner and a dedicated phone line.
If you expect to have any video conferences, you’ll want to make sure your computer and camera are set up in an appropriate location. A clean, quiet and professional background will come across better than a view of your messy kitchen, screaming toddler or barking dog. (This also gives those who work from home a good reason to shower and get dressed.)
Get Good Equipment
Working from the couch may be comfortable for a little while, but your back and neck will start hurting eventually. For health reasons (and to increase your productivity), it’s important to have a proper setup.
For most desk jockeys, that means getting a high-quality, adjustable office chair. For the first few months of work-ing from home for a Dallas-based company, Margaret McKinnon worked from a little plastic chair, which was awful for her back. “I had a really nice office chair in my office, and I wish I could have taken it with me,” she said.
Since you’ll be spending a lot of time in that chair, it’s important to go to a few stores and sit in them, test them out and find one that provides proper support. The Healthy Back Store (3218 Duke St.) can provide guidance if you don’t know where to start or what to look for in a chair. Local ergonomics consultants can also help you adjust your chair and desk. A number of local companies also sell sit-stand desks, walking desks and other options.
A reliable high-speed Internet connection is critical for most jobs, and you may need a landline for phone calls. In addition, you may want a headset for lengthier calls. A larger monitor than the one on your laptop, and a keyboard and mouse or trackpad can also help.
Make Some Family Rules
Just like work can creep into non-working hours, chores and errands can creep into work time.
If you have a spouse, children or even roommates, there should be some ground rules in place, a consistent schedule and limits on what non-work things can be accomplished during the day.
“Create boundaries, whether it’s physical spaces just for work, or a schedule,” said McLaughlin, who schedules herself (on some days, at least) as if she were in an office. “I say, ‘I’m working at these times. I’m not throwing in laundry, I’m not throw-ing food in the crockpot.’”
Jaffe says working from home has provided her with more work-life balance because she uses her time as efficiently as she can. “If I’m on a call, I am never sitting down,” Jaffe said. While she’s on conference calls, she may also be folding laundry or cleaning. “If I don’t have to be sitting at my desk, I try to do those things. I chose that on purpose to help our family.” She’s even gotten grocery shop-ping down to a high-speed science and can get it done during her lunch hour.
Hawk takes a different approach. “I treat my daily routine and rituals the same as if I were going into an office,” she said. Her father worked from home (and still does today), and she remembers him kissing her mom goodbye in the morning and going upstairs to work.
Also, Hawk laughs at people who think they can be productive working from home while watching the kids.
“You cannot be 100 percent present for either of those things if you’re trying to do both. I don’t care how good of a multitasker you are,” Hawk said. “I’m not doing justice to my kids and I’m not doing justice to my work when I’m trying to do both.”
Even with its challenges, working at home has huge benefits, Jaffe said. “I could sit out on my porch and work in the sunshine if I wanted. That’s not some-thing you can always do in an office.”
As to whether she’d ever go back to working in an actual office, McLaughlin said maybe – when her kids are older and for a big salary increase. “They’d have to pay me a lot more to deal with the traffic.”
