Running a business from home
Running your business from home is harder than a lot of people
think. Here we discuss what some of our clients have found out
about running a business from home.
Finding the space
If you’re just starting out you may not be able to afford to
build or convert a room just for your business, so you will need to
find space within your home.
Many people underestimate just how big a change that can be. If
you truly want to focus on your business and not blur the
boundaries between your home and work lives, you need to completely
dedicate that space to your work, which is almost as big an
intrusion as taking in a lodger!
You need everything relating to your work, such as paperwork and
files to be quickly to hand at all times, but at the same time you
need to know that you can walk away from it at the end of the
working day. This can be very difficult if you don’t find a room or
area you can totally dedicate to your work.
If you do decide to build or convert a room for work, be sure to
check with your mortgage lender, your home insurer and your local
planning office before going ahead with any work. If your insurers
restrict or cancel your policy, we have a household insurance
policy designed specifically for homeworkers.
Intrusions
You may be proud of the fact that you’re setting up in business
on your own and will want to tell everyone you know! It could be
wise though to be careful about who you tell that you’ll be working
from home.
One of the downsides of working from home is that friends and
family might just be tempted to drop in for a coffee because they
know that you’ll be at home all day. They might even think they’re
doing you a favour by dropping in to break up your day and not
realise how busy you are.
So, you should probably only tell very close friends that you
will be working from home, and make it clear that you’d appreciate
it if they didn’t drop in during working hours without checking
with you first.
There will of course be other intrusions such as post and
parcels being delivered, and phone calls to your home phone number.
These will be harder to avoid, but you might want to consider
registering your home number with the Telephone Preference Service to
ensure that you don’t get lots of sales calls during the day.
Keeping things separate
We’ve already said that having a dedicated workspace is
important, but that’s not the only way to keep your home and work
life separate.
A separate phone line for work needn’t cost a lot more,
especially if you use the same supplier as for your home number.
This would mean that you could screen your calls more carefully and
avoid taking work calls out of hours, or on days you’ve set aside
as holidays.
As with your home phone, you can register your work phone number
with the Telephone Preference Service if you feel you are getting
too many sales calls. A lot of our clients have set up in business
and done all they can to get their name and number out there to
promote themselves, only to find that most of the calls they
receive are trying to sell them something, which can be very
frustrating.
Time management is another important aspect. Working from home
gives you the whole day to do all of your work and personal tasks
as and when you please. This might seem attractive, but people
we’ve spoken to have found that it can be a hindrance.
You may be better off structuring your working day much like
before, and only breaking off for things like doctor’s and
dentist’s appointments or genuine emergencies so that you don’t end
up at the end of the day wondering where all the time went, and not
having achieved what you wanted to. You could also lose sense of
what’s your time and what’s work time.
Of course, there may be good reasons why you need to work
flexibly, such as having young children or needing to fit round the
times your clients are available. However, if you don’t structure
your day and finish your work as early as you can, you might spend
a high proportion of your day with unfinished work on your
mind.
Exercise and wellbeing
Working long hours can be counter-productive after a certain
point, and staying in one place all day and night might leave you
feeling a bit trapped by your work.
By not travelling to work any more you will have freed up some
time, so why not use it effectively? Think of all the things you
may have put off in the past simply because you haven’t had the
time, such as exercise or learning something new, and get in to the
habit of using this free time for those things.
Act quickly, so that these new activities will become part of
your new routine before they get forgotten. Otherwise, you may just
spend more and more time at your desk or in front of the computer
screen.
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