Working from Home - The Good, The Bad & the Ugly
Print View
Total views: 262
No doubt you are excited about the idea of working from home. Who wouldn’t be? No more commuting to the office, a chance to make a good living doing something you enjoy without having to leave your house, and the ability to work in your pajamas. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal!
There are definite benefits to working at home, and it can be an absolutely fabulous experience. However, along with the good points of working at home, there are also some hazards that you should consider so you can take steps to avoid them.
The first pitfall to working at home is that you may find yourself always working. It’s easy to think you are just going to spend 10 minutes updating your website, and before you know it you have been working on your business for 3 hours and have missed out on an entire evening. This may not sound like a downside at first, but always working and not taking time off to relax, spend time with friends and family, and enjoy life will eventually lead to burnout.
Additionally, if your customers become used to you being online at all hours of the day and night, they will come to expect it from you. If they send an email at 10:00 PM, they may expect a response right away if you have always responded at 10:00 PM in the past. Or they may expect you to be online every weekend when you would prefer to have weekends off.
To avoid this pitfall, establish some definite hours of operation. Post them clearly on your website so your customers know when you will be available to answer emails and provide support. Make every effort not to work during those hours, but rather to take the evening off, relax and enjoy yourself.
Again, this may go against your instinct at first since it seems like I am encouraging you to have poor work ethic and poor customer service. That’s not the case at all. Instead I am advising that you run your business exactly as you would if it were a brick and mortar store instead of an online store that you ran from home. It is OK to put in overtime if there is something that you need to get done, just don’t do it every night. It’s OK to work weekends if you want, but be sure to also take time off. It’s OK to answer emails in the middle of the night, but be aware that it may set your customers up to always expect this from you.
By posting your hours on your website you are giving yourself the flexibility to take time off if you need to and letting your customers know definite hours that you will be available to help them.
Taking vacations can also seem like a big problem when you run an online store. If you don’t manage your store, who will? There are several options for dealing with this.
You can ask a friend or family member to handle shipping for you and train them how to do it. Be sure to post on your website that you will be out of town and someone else will be shipping for you so there may be delays. This will help your customers to be aware of what is going on in case there are problems while you are away.
If that is not an option for you, you can always close shop. All you have to do is post a notice on your website indicated that you will be away from your store from xxx – xxx dates. Any orders placed during this time will not ship until you return on xxx date. Many small businesses do this without trouble and without losing customers. Be sure to post your notice well in advance so customers can place orders for the things they need before you leave town.
Another hazard of working from home is that it can be very easy to get distracted from your work. When you have a job in an office or away from home, you have a very clear distinction between the time when you are “at the office” at the time when you are “at home”. This line can easily become blurred when you work from home. You may find yourself taking just 30 minutes to watch a favourite soap opera, or just going outside to enjoy the day for 15 minutes. These 15 and 30 minute breaks can quickly turn into the vast majority of the day if you aren’t careful.
Really work to monitor yourself to be sure that you are not getting off track. One helpful way to combat this is to make up a list of things that you need to get done for your business that day. The list should help keep you on task and help you to accomplish everything you need to get done. It’s not that you can’t take breaks and enjoy the benefits of working at home, it’s just that you can’t let those breaks get out of hand.
Once you have a handle on the hazards of working at home, enjoy the benefits! They are great!