Getting Started Working From Home

In todays modern working world we have found ourselves in an environment where companies in an effort to attract the best talent, are allowing a significant number of employees to work from home. We have always had the ability to work from home in jobs where your job might be phone or help desk related and the times you brought work home from the office such as paperwork. Today it has become an entire subculture and way of life to be able to work from home.

Today vs Yesterday

In days of yesteryear your mom or dad would go to work with their briefcases and return later to possibly finish some work from the office. They would sit at the dining room table with paper, pen and pencils in hand to get their work finished. Your parents couldn’t really call in and say I’m working from home today, you were either on vacation or out sick. During these times we had homes with walls and doors everywhere so the working parent could be isolated from the noise and confusion of the household, plus usually only one parent worked so someone was available to control the chaos.

In todays world especially post-pandemic companies rely heavily on remote employees who perform their entire job from home. Emails, message platforms and text messaging have replaced interoffice memos or the office dropin. Your co-workers are all in different timezones and even countries. Your arsenal isn’t paper and pens anymore but a high powered laptop, multiple monitors, docking stations, keyboards, mice, private space, a dedicated desk and a high speed internet connection, along with many other tools. Today we have open home concepts, two working parents, children with very active lives outside the home and a difficulty in filtering the chaos. This puts a strain on the person working from home to stay focused and even using some of their time outside of working hours to complete work the chaos has prevented them from completing. This extra-curricular work time often-times will lead difficulties in health and work performance for upcoming days.

So What Should You Do About Getting Started

I myself have been working from home for over 15 years and I’d like to share some of the things I’ve done to make working from home work for me. These are things I’ve done and I am in no way a workspace specialist but seem to work for me.

1. First and foremost, create a work space someplace in your home that is dedicated for your home office. It can’t be a shared space where the kids or others use the desk for homework, gaming or watching videos. Make that space comfortable for your needs and supply it like you would if it was a desk in your businesses office. Establish this space and let your family know that it is to be treated like everything is te property of your company.
2. If you don’t already have it get the best and fasted internet service you can so you can get your job done. In todays phone almost 95% of your communication will be the internet online meetings, online phone calls, email, messaging systems and texting. These all require bandwidth along with your working documents you move up and down from the office or cloud.
3. This is not absolutely needed but get your self some sort of docking station where you can connect multiple monitors, memory devices and computer peripherals into one central point. This will you allow you to swap out your personal computer with a work computer so you don’t need 2 desks, more monitors and other support. I’d highly suggest you get at least 2 monitors for your home setup. It makes your job a lot easier and allows for better multitasking.
4. This is one I still struggle with but establish with your family and household members that although you are working from home your time working from home is the same as if you were in the office. You can’t just plan a day of errands and chores with work in between. Your company expects you to be available for calls and meetings when they need you not when your available. Not being available can it will lead to trouble in work and possible loss of your position.
5. If you have appointments, plan to take sick or vacation time and maybe some other things that can’t be put off. Communicate this to your team and manager as soon as possible, making sure they have time to either have someone take up your missed time or plan ahead for you being out or unavailable. Communication is key in a work from home position, you need to always let folks know what you are working on or are doing along with statuses.
6. I like to get up in the morning and shower, maybe watch some news, dress in a business casual shirt, long casual dress pants and dress shoes then proceed to my office area. Again this is not a must have but it makes me feel like I’m in the office and in turn I act like I would if I was in the office. I also like to make sure my cameras are on for team meetings so people can see me and I get a feeling of neing connected to them. It can get disheartening and sometimes unhealthy if you disconnect totally from your remote work friends.
7. First thing when starting yiur day, check your meetings, message and email. We work in a 24/7 environment now, one where our co-workers are working in other time zones and countries around the world. Like the old British Empire ‘The sun may never set on your workday’. Once you’ve caught up prepare your day, what are you going to work on, what might you need to accomplish it and straight out goals for the day. Set reminders for your self to take breaks or lunches. Oftentimes in an office our friends will come and get us or we will see large bodies of peple moving fro breaks and we will join. It is pretty important that you escape your work environment and reset your mind for the remainder of the day.
8. Make saure you have a fairly good sized desk, you may need to spread out papers and other tools when working a problem better to have them at easy reach. Get a desk with a keyboard drawer, add a wrist rest to avoid injuries and make sure the keyboard is ergonomically comfortable since you will spend a lot of time typing. Set the middle of your monitors at eye level and close enough to be easily read. Lastly get a comfortable chair with a headrest to lean back in from time to time and remove stress from your shoulders, the chair should have adjustable height arm rests to keep pressure off the wrists, you should have some sort of lumbar support system and lastly I like the chair to be mesh or breathable so it doesn’t get uncomfortable.
9. At the end of your day unplug yourself from your 24/7 office space. It is way to easy to get caught up in something and want to finish it, get some emergency call that the company will fall into an abyss if a problem doesn’t get solved or just work because you have nothing to do. This can lead to relationship problems, health problems or just plain social issues. We wind up ignoring family or our duties to that family, you run yourself down or start to experience mental problems and in the last case you become anxious outside your home and have a hard time dealing with society as a whole. Take break, talk with your wife and kids and get out into settings where you have to meet and hang with other people besides the 2d picture of co-workers on a zoom meeting.

Thanks for stopping by and I hope my little life lessons will help you get started of fix a work from home situation you may have.