Working from home can be both exciting and stressful at the same time. It involves and requires a huge amount of commitment to enable you to make the most of the situation and stay committed when the sofa and a hot cup of coca beckons. One of the most important elements of running a home business is this high level of commitment, but there are several more unique elements which are needed in a home office:
New Email
When you join a company for employment the first thing that will happen is that you will be given a company email address. This is a testament to the importance of having a company domain for your emails. Having a name@company.co.uk style email address is far more professional than using a name@yahoo style email address and the change will be reflected in your business success. It is also important to ensure that you can achieve compatibility with all clients and companies. It is thus important to be prepared to convert from lotus notes to outlook and vice versa as this program will provide you with a far greater flexibility and allow you to cater to a wider range of company clients.
Comprehensive Insurance
When working for yourself, it is important to recognise that there is no support mechanism supporting you. You will literally be working alone and taking on the full responsibility of all that a business entails. One of the key elements of this is securing yourself during sickness or injury. In a company there would obviously be a period of time over which sick pay would be provided and your tasks would be covered in the interim. In a small business, however, the consequences are far greater because you will lose your income and also lose your customers because they will necessarily need to find alternative means to complete the jobs whilst you are sick. For this reason it is vital to get comprehensive income protection insurance so that you can guarantee an income even if you are sick or injured and unable to work.
Working Environment
When people think of working from home they immediately imagine someone lying on a sofa in their pyjamas, with a laptop on their knee. It is of course possible to run a very small home business from this position but it is not advisable for anyone wanting to achieve an effective business operation. Running a business successful stems from your mindset, and the best way to get into the right mindset is to set up a home office. Having a quality home office means that it is separated from the distractions and chaos of your house. It should be somewhere that noise from your family will not reach and as far away from play or entertainment areas. Getting fully dressed and going to your home office every day will set you up for a hard day of work in a way that moving from bed to the sofa cannot achieve.
Telephone
It is vital that your business telephone is exactly that and not a home line. If your answering machine apologies for the absence of the Jones Family before detailing when to receive a call back about a business enquiry then you will likely lose that customer. Professionalism is a state of mind in many cases and the front that you present to your customers will determine how they view your business.
