20 Must-Know Tips for Working From Home

When you’re in your own home, it can be tempting to spend time preparing a nice breakfast and lunch for yourself, chopping and cooking included. Don’t use precious minutes making your food the day of work — cook it the night before. It can be so easy to get lost in your work as a telecommuter that you avoid breaks altogether. Don’t let the guilt of working in the building you sleep in prevent you from taking five minutes to relax.

So if you’re wondering whether genuine work from home jobs in the UK packing leaflets do really exist, make sure you read this article first. You could specialise in providing simple finger food for kids’ birthday parties, or offer an upmarket dinner party catering service. Once you’re ready to start charging, you can advertise your services via the same channels. The best way to get started is by making cakes in your spare time for friends and family. You can then photograph and showcase these via a Facebook page and Instagram feed.

Remote working tips from the team

This one is a no-brainer now that our professional and personal lives are happening all in the same square footage. Many of us already had Muse-branded webcam covers on our work laptops, but I also purchased one for my personal laptop and sent them as gifts to family members. There are all kinds of desks to choose from nowadays—from L-shaped to wall-mounted. You can even use a C-shaped end table by your couch as a laptop desk (as I like to do to enjoy the open living room space).

Now that you have formed new company policies, share them with the rest of the team and start enforcing them. If team members start acting in a way contrary to the new team culture, then hold the employees accountable and educate them on your team’s plans for evolution. If your company sets standards and does not follow through, then your things needed to work from home employees will easily lose trust in management, which causes your team culture to suffer. This knowledge sharing signals to your team that your company values collaboration and that others in the organization are invested in professional development. Set up a mentor buddy system and pair mentors with new employees in the same department.

Create T-shirts

“Adding a firm deadline cranks up the pressure and forces you to knock out the most important tasks as fast as possible. If left unchecked, remote work has a way of creeping into the evening hours, so having this hard cutoff point helps protect work-life balance as well,” Glass says. Just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean you’re home. If you share space with another work-from-home adult, you may have to lay ground rules about meeting times, shared desks and chairs, and quiet times. And, if you’re not sure your employer will agree to working completely remotely, talk about the option of working remotely one or two days a week. When you use the work-from-home tips below, and your boss sees how productive you are, they could allow you more days to work from home.

• In virtual teams, communication is crucial, but you can’t ask about every little thing anytime you need something.
• At home, however, the transition from your pillow to your computer can be much more jarring.
• This ensures you stay signed out of all your accounts, and each web search doesn’t autocomplete the word you’re typing.
• So, just as you’re encouraged to overestimate how many work hours you’ll spend doing one thing, you should also overestimate how many things you’ll do during the day.
• By making team building part of your company culture, you demonstrate that you care about employee well-being and providing a good time at work.