We live in a digital world, and we all know that an office job these days is as much about what you do as where you do it. If you’re in the tech industry, the best working arrangement for you may just be to work from home.
Working from home can bring many benefits–but it also comes with its own unique challenges.
Here SAM News are eight tips to help make your remote work life healthy and prosperous:
1. Encourage communication and Set boundaries.
Whether you’re online or in person, it’s important that you are friendlier to others, especially if they’re physically present too.
If you shrug off their attempts to communicate with you face-to-face, they may feel uncomfortable about trying again.
It’s important to be able to separate your work and personal lives. While it may be tempting, don’t take your work home with you or expect to do your work at home as though you’re in a traditional office setting.
You can make a point of going out for lunch with coworkers or meeting up for happy hour after work, even if you don’t live close to them.
If they feel comfortable going above and beyond your stated job description, they may not feel comfortable asking you to do the same.
2. Make sure your home office is spotless.
If the room is messy, the likelihood of getting guests who are neither family nor friends can be high, since many people do not want to go into a messy environment where they’ll be known as “the person who eats pizza for dinner.”
The same goes for your car, if you use this for commuting to work. If you have a messy home, your guests will feel equally negative, and it will come across in your professionalism.
3. Make sure your company has a policy on working from home.
Companies may have working from home policies already in place–so check the policies before you come up with an excuse to start working from home.
Working from home can be beneficial to both employee and employer, but not if there isn’t a plan set in place to keep the job productive, efficient, and healthy for everyone involved.
4. Make sure your computer is secure and find healthy outlets for work stress.
You wouldn’t want just anyone who knows about computers well enough to turn it on being able to access your emails or other sensitive information stored in it.
Put your computer on a network that requires a password to be able to access the internet.
That way, you can hand out your Wi-Fi password to friends or family, but no one can use it without knowing how to access your network.
Whether you prefer meditating, exercising, or heading out with friends after work, you need some way of unwinding after spending the day doing work—even if you’re working from home.
It’s important for your health and happiness that you find healthy outlets for stress. Blood pressure medicine isn’t just useful for physical health; it has psychological benefits too!
5. Make sure you have a comfortable and quiet working space.
You wouldn’t want to work in a noisy and cramped room all day–otherwise, why not just work in the office?
It’s important to make sure you have the right equipment and your supplies are well-organized so that your working environment doesn’t get in the way of your performance anymore than necessary.
6. Make sure your work is protected from disruptions.
Just because you’re not at an office where people can walk up and down the halls without making noise, doesn’t mean they won’t try to contact you through means other than email or phone call.
Make sure you have a good plan in place for this–such as auto-dials to other phones or email accounts or alerts through other means.
7. Make sure you have a good routine setup to enable your work at its best.
Your routine doesn’t have to be different from what it would be if you were at the office, but it should be comfortable and should allow for plenty of breaks and quiet time to enable you to recharge and think clearly.
You may want to set aside certain times of the day for business activities and other times for personal activities.
8. Make sure your family is on board with the arrangement.
You wouldn’t want unexpected visitors at your home while you’re trying to get work done.
Make sure they understand the importance of your work, and that you won’t be available during certain times of the day or week–and if they need you, they can call or email.
Also make sure family members are aware that when you are working, you are not to be disturbed by them in any way.
