We’ve all seen the surveys about creating a better work-life balance and everyone wants to achieve it – the question is, what’s the best way to do it?
A good place to start is to look at working from home – whether on a part-time or permanent basis. It seems like a simple option, but people worry about the complexity and cost of setting up the systems they need. This may have been an issue a couple of years ago, but not anymore.
In today’s internet and mobile-enabled world, home workers and home-based businesses can operate as effectively from home as they can from an office. As a result, home working should be a real option for everyone – whether you’re a sole trader or an employee of large company – but it has to be done properly.
The first and most important consideration for any homeworker should be around communications. You need to be contactable during your working day via a range of media, including telephone and email, so that you can keep in touch with customers and colleagues. As a result, if you’re beginning to work from home, you need a landline, mobile and internet connection at the very least.
Broadband is now perhaps the most critical service for anyone working from home. Not only does it provide you with high-speed surfing capabilities and faster email, it also opens up a range of tools to make life easier. Broadband allows users to securely access a range software and services over the internet. Often called Software as a Service (SaaS), these hosted or on-demand tools include email, collaboration tools and business admin packages.
A great example of a SaaS application designed for homeworkers is an online collaboration tool. These Web-based, easy to use hosted services, such as BT Workspace, allow groups of people share information, manage projects, and improve customer relationships. They are designed to store information securely, opening it up to selected groups of individuals, whether colleagues, customers or partners, for collaborative working.
Support, security and backup are also key areas for homeworkers to consider, and there is a range of services designed to work over the Web that ensure your time is spent concentrating on business, rather than IT issues.
Remote IT support services, for example, offer you peace of mind to homeworkers, by providing a business-grade support team that can resolve IT problems over the phone or by securely taking control of your machine. They are also on hand 24 hours per day to answer any queries or discuss future IT requirements or setup.
Backup is also an important part of working remotely. Larger businesses generally have a procedure in place, but only 17 per cent of all companies backup remotely. For a minimum charge, starting at £5 per month, automated services allow users to set backup to happen daily, so the minimum amount of data is lost should disaster strike.
There are also important security challenges for homeworkers, similar to those faced in the office. You need to make sure anti-virus and firewall software is installed on computers and your network is password protected.
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