You Need to Know About Working from Home
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Everything you need to know about working from home Everything you need to know about working from home - Ebook. 1 Table of contents What is remote work and why most people choose to 01 work from home? 4 Benefits of working from home for 02 employees 6 Benefits of working from home for 03 employers 12 Remote work is here to stay, it’s not 04 a temporary trend 16 Debugging work from 05 home 18 Designing your home 06 work space 22 Art of Staying 07 Productive 26 Motivate 08 yourself! 36 Everything you need to know 2 about working from home - Ebook. How to make yourself known 09 and seen 42 Creating “virtual water cooler” in 10 your work space 48 Switching 11 off 52 Addressing loneliness while 12 working remotely 54 Meditation & 13 mindfulness 58 Global Work From 14 Home Day 62 Everything you need to know about working from home - Ebook. 3 What is remote work and why most people choose 01 to work from home? With continuously improving tech- Coworking spaces, social activities, nology and an ever changing work- and regular outdoor trips for example ing culture, remote work is becoming may not be relevant or recommended increasingly common in companies depending on your location and local around the globe. But now a lot of us are government guidelines. Please take finding ourselves in a situation where what you feel makes sense to you and we have to work from home due to the apply it in the safest way possible. We recent COVID-19 outbreak. It’s not ideal want everyone to be healthy, produc- that a large proportion of the workforce tive, and happy, so please keep this in are having to face home office without mind before you follow on any advice. proper training or support. Neverthe- We wish you all the best and good luck less, we’re here to help give you all the with starting or continuing on your essential tips and strategies that you will remote work journey! need to make sure that you are at the top of your game no matter where you are working from. We originally created this guide to tie in with our Global Work From Home Day that we ran last year. Now it’s become more useful than ever as companies and teams are searching for the best ways to work from home and minimise the impact to their busi- nesses during this extraordinary time. We’ve revisited some topics to provide you all with new, updated, and essen- tial information to help everyone who now is having to work from home, all for free. It’s just our way of helping us all get through the situation we’re in, and to help people feel more confident in developing their remote work skills. Just a quick word of warning: not all the advice and articles will be directly applicable due to the global lockdown that has already begun to take place. Everything you need to know 4 about working from home - Ebook. Everything you need to know about working from home - Ebook. 5 Benefits of working from home 02 for employees A lot of employees value flexibility Flexible working arrangements also in their working arrangements for a help employees better manage their number of reasons, often depend- work-life balance. It’s been shown to ent upon their own personal circum- be conducive to a better standard of stances and priorities. With COVID-19 mental and physical health, reducing now changing the current working stress and burnout. FlexJobs reports landscape hugely to one where remote that 97% of over 3000 respondents in work dominates, many workers are their 2018 annual survey said that a flex- now perceiving the benefits a bit more ible job would have a “huge improve- differently than usual. We can see that ment or positive impact on their overall working from home is a crucial part of quality of life2”. maintaining a global pandemic, and can help in keeping us and our loved ones “This is my first experience of working more safe. How we perceive working from home full time. I wondered if it was from home, and the benefits that we too good to be true, because in previous get from it, has all of a sudden seen a companies they subscribed to the idea massive change. Now that a lot of us that dedication meant being in the office are forced to work from home regard- all hours. Now I feel valued and trusted. less of our choice, people can perceive We’re all free to build a work environ- their own personal benefits differently. ment that encourages our productivity. We still have constant communication When given the choice to work from and “office” jokes; you don’t miss out home under normal circumstances, on that just because you’re remote. And one common group to really benefit you don’t have to do big tea rounds!” - are parents. This group perhaps need Maygen Jacques, Marketing Manager to work from home to look after chil- from Code Enigma. dren or simply to make their day more manageable when organising their Not needing to commute and signifi- family routine. FlexJobs, also cited in the cantly reducing your travel costs can HBR article, found that parents ranked lead to an increase in real income. You work flexibility and work-life balance also save precious time spent commut- as the most important work benefits.1 ing, and the stress associated with trav- This beats even salary and health insur- elling to work. 55% of people reported ance in the list of priorities. increases levels of stress due to their 2 https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/flexjobs-2018-an- 1 https://www.flexjobs.com/blog/post/survey-par- nual-survey-workers-believe-flexible-remote-job-can-help- ents-rank-work-flexibility-ahead-salary/ save-money-reduce-stress-more/ Everything you need to know 6 about working from home - Ebook. Career or family, why should i choose? • You do not use your own car or public transport for moving to and from work, - by Nancy Aharpour from DonnaJobs so you are reducing the use of fossil fuels and carbon emissions, thus improving air All over the world, there are millions of talented quality; women who find it difficult to enter, emerge in • Less commuting, less traffic. This also or simply re-enter the workforce after mater- leads to a smaller number of accidents; nity leave. These barriers could be due to family • #WorkFromHome saves considerable time commitments or other reasons related to their that can be used with children, with family, status as women. for yourself; • If you have more time for yourself then For both private and public companies, these you are more satisfied and happier; women are a considerable resource of relia- • The energy consumption of office equip- bility, competence and talent but for them it is ment is greater than domestic ones, once often difficult, if not impossible, to find a job again #WorkFromHome gives a global We all know that the family comes first! advantage. One great solution to this problem is Donna- Jobs and the possibility that the platform gives My name is Nancy Aharpour and I am a #Work- to all women to #WorkFromHome with flexible FromHome Mother, the CEO & Founder of the jobs. DonnaJobs’ Project. I created this project with the aim of support- If I am the master of my work, if I am the master ing and promoting #WorkFromHome not only of my time, then I am no longer obliged to pick for women who want to reconcile the joys of family over a career, I can have both of them. motherhood with love for their career but for Why should I choose? all of us. Deciding to work from home is a fantastic In conclusion we can say that #WorkFrom- answer that helps everybody, not only the Home is the way of working of the future and women but even the environment too. it acts in favour of the family and to the safe- guard of our Planet. So DonnaJobs also supports our Planet by encouraging and promoting #WorkFromHome, So, let’s #WorkFromHome. which in turn has a series of benefits in addi- tion to those already mentioned: daily commute, according to a report amount spent on food can be found by the UK Royal Society for Public when working at home, along with Health as cited in Forbes.3 Saving both improvements in the overall health- time and money will of course lead to iness and nutrition of what you eat. an improvement in your overall work- These costs can significantly add up life balance. over time, meaning that working from home can have a big financial benefit Many people also get tempted at work for you over working in the office. to splash out on expensive meals or takeaway food when taking their lunch “I live about 45 minutes from our break. Significant reductions in the local office so the time saved from my commute, getting “office” ready, and 3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrealoubi- er/2017/07/20/benefits-of-telecommuting-for-the-fu- socializing throughout the day really ture-of-work/#1d1e0ec316c6 Everything you need to know about working from home - Ebook. 7 adds up. I have found that working from 5 Remote Work Benefits and How home several days a week frees up an You Can Make the Best of Them average of 3-4 hours per day, which is time I can use to be more productive - by Alexandra Cote, Digital Marketing at Paymo with my work, accomplish other tasks around my home, or take care of admin- I’ve been working remotely for well over a year now and had the chance to talk to other fellow istrative tasks for a non-profit that I remote workers and see their own take on this support.