Work online – Work from Home
Work from Home? You know you want to do it… but how! that’s the big question – just how the heck do you make it work? You need to ask your boss, get the permissions, maybe take a pay cut, sort out internet, printer equipment, wife, family, pets all on top, no quiet space, can’t regulate your own time. You know what – that’s all a big fat excuse. Anyone can work from home. In fact, you have one major advantage if you already work in an office.
So there is a separation, if you’re a mechanic or a grocer, or have a practical job that requires your presence, first off – hats off to you, you’re being practical and hopefully creative. Us office workers often need to re-evaluate our priorities as we stumble from one business meeting to a conference call. However, even if you are required on-site all your ‘office admin’ work can be done from home. Suppliers, Bills, Invoicing, Banking can all be done from home.
But let focus on the Office Worker for a moment – any office worker can now work from home, every ‘boss’ needs to listen to their employees and if you’re the boss then you need to encourage people to work from home. Whether you’re thinking of the environment, less petrol, or trusting your employees working from home for a significant part of the week, month or full time means a far more flexible workforce, far more adaptable, and usually with good planning a more productive office worker.
I remember when Virgin Atlantic introduced unlimited holidays for their staff. People didn’t just suddenly take unlimited holidays, the rule was simply – if you have completed your assigned tasks then take the rest of the time off.
You see we in the west have become so accustomed to just getting the most we can out of an employee for the money we pay them. Instead of saying you work from 9-5, 5 days a week and we expect you to have achieved XYZ goals or projects. We seriously need to shift to a system of this is the work we need to be done – who wants to do it.
Last week I published a Blog about trends within the web design business, but I left out some key numbers… around 15% of all website designers work over 49 hours and another 14% work between 40 and 48 hours a week – those are long days. We might be sitting in front of a computer day after day, but that is a lot of screen time and I’d not really say that was healthy.
The second Stat – which is more positive – is that 39% of all web design work is done at a fixed rate. I.e. we plan a project, quote for it and work towards it. That’s certainly how we try to do it here, what that means is that if we don’t work – we’re not paid… work a bit hard than average and we’re paid a bit more and I for one have certainly seen that over my 20 years doing this job. There are lean times and bountiful times. The nice thing is all I have to do is get the computer out and I can be productive.
This I believe is working to order… and not 9-5. And this is how a lot more of us should work. If you’re a banker, the markets are open at specific times… if you’re in real estate work to sell or rent a house, no need to do any other phaff.
I’ll give another example, a friend, a traditional solid wood carpenter was complaining about how a job took so long. He was being paid £5k for the work and it wasn’t that difficult. But his problem was that he was starting at 11 am, breaking for a couple of hours for lunch and then doing an hour or so in the afternoon before knocking off early… total time of work was about 3 or 4 hours a day, the total length of job, months and months. However, if he had got up at 8 am was working by nine putting in 8 hours a day minimum, then job done in just a few weeks and he would be 5k richer.
Neither method is right or wrong because all the hours of the day not worked can or could be spent with family, running the house doing other things, equally he could have worked super hard for a few weeks and taken a vacation. The point is fixed project vs money earned works and more and more of us should be doing it. it really does lead to a better quality of life.
But back to the working from home concept. We’ve established bosses should be open to the idea and that it may be more suitable for office workers. But then go for it. If you analyse every excuse you can think of, they all fall down pretty easily. And you won’t be alone, artists, writers, creative types have done it for years, property developers, farmers, inventors and boffins have all done it. We web designers and computer types have just added ourselves to the list. And with all the ease of working online – what could be easier.
I’ll leave you with one thought – why stop at working from home. Why not work from anywhere, take a client of our www.serafinaorganic.com – they’re offering work from home solution in the Dominican Republic – literally get on a plane, get settled in and work from another country – all the benefits of a holiday, none of the distractions of home and a chance to get your regular 8 hours work done, or if you’re being properly treated all the ‘work required of you’ done.
It is an idea. Oops – did I mention I’m in the Dominican Republic as I write this.