Today, businesses are more open to remote work. It might have been a forced situation during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work is starting to become the more preferred approach, both for business owners and employees alike. Businesses save up on commercial real estate costs to house operations, giving employees a chance to work from home if their presence is not necessary to keep the company running. For employees, remote work provides more flexibility to perform their responsibilities and interests in life, contributing to better job satisfaction and performance.
However, there are plenty of obstacles to be wary of when you work from home, especially if it is your first time. You will immediately find that your house is not suitable for performing work tasks. Before you work from home, you must set up a good working environment in an environment usually meant for personal life. Here are a few tips to help you prepare to work from home.
Make Room for the Home Office
To work from home means to set up a home office. Most roles require multiple work equipment, including a laptop, computer, printer, and desk. Storage solutions for documents and office tools might also be necessary investments. With so many things to worry about, a home office should be prioritized. Unfortunately, you might not know where to place it yet, making it necessary to perform home renovations.
Existing spaces can be your starting point when building your home office. Whether it is at the corner of your bedroom, a portion of the kitchen countertop, or the coffee table of the living room, you can set up a temporary space for your home office while preparing for home renovations. It might not be ideal, but investing in a remote work space will require proper planning if you are expecting to remain in that working setup for a long time. A simple chair and table might be enough to allow you to work from home.
When you finally have the budget and time for home renovations, you can start to build on your home office. An added wing, an extra room, or an extended space can accommodate your work needs. You must have a good idea of what your role entails to ensure you dedicate enough space for it. If you do not have to do major structural changes, you can do it yourself. Otherwise, partnering with an interior designer and a home contractor might be the best and most efficient solution.
Prioritize Good Seating
Your home office is exactly what it sounds like: a workspace inside your house. It should have a desk, allowing you to place work equipment and office supplies in an area where each of them are within arm’s reach. The desk is easy to get as you might already have one at home. However, the regular home chair might not suffice for your home office. If you want to work from home productively, investing in comfortable seating might be necessary.
Office seating often provides an ergonomic design, allowing employees to work comfortably while maintaining a good posture. Chairs at the dinner table might make you feel too tight while sitting down for long hours, while a couch might be too comfortable that becoming productive in work tasks becomes difficult to maintain. It will be essential to get an ergonomic office chair to ensure you replicate the workplace setting, allowing you to maintain productivity. A gaming chair will also be ideal since gamers often sit for long hours for recreational purposes. You can replicate the feeling when you work from home, ensuring your productivity and comfort at the same time.
Ensure Privacy
The home office, unfortunately, means everyone in your household has easy access to it. Nothing makes working productively more challenging than having your kids or other household responsibilities distract you from your work. As a result, ensuring privacy will be critical when you work from home. Getting a lock on the home office’s door will ensure you can restrict entry when you have to focus on your responsibilities at work or have an important meeting. It doesn’t have to be advanced; it just has to be enough to tell the rest of your family that you are working.
Every room has windows, but they might provide you with enough distraction during critical work hours. Temporarily restricting visibility might be ideal when you want privacy in your home office, making it necessary to cover it. Curtains and shutters might be enough to prevent yourself from getting distracted while you work from home. If you want a more permanent solution, you might want to consider partnering with a window treatment company.
Unfortunately, the size of your home office’s window might already have damage. A broken glass panel or faulty window mechanism could mean distractions since noise can travel to your home louder. You can pursue window replacement to ensure the entry point remains optimal for your home office’s privacy, allowing you to focus on your tasks when you work from home.
Create a Relaxing Outdoor Environment
Regardless of where you are, you will always need refreshing breaks from work. At the office, you have access to break rooms, pantries, and even sleeping quarters. Unfortunately, those features at the house often mean distractions. The kitchen and bedroom can make you want to spend more time there because eating and sleeping at home is not the same as lunchtime and napping at the office. If there is any other place in your residential property that can serve as a break room during work hours, it is the backyard.
The outdoor environment can help you take a break from working from home. A breath of fresh air and sunlight might be enough to make you feel refreshed before you go back to being productive. However, your current landscaping design might not reflect a cozy environment yet, making it necessary to build one. Proper gardening tasks can help ensure you maintain a green and lively atmosphere. Patios, pathways, and wooden decks might also be ideal for your backyard, making it necessary to hire landscape architects. They can build an ideal outdoor environment that makes you want to hang out there often, especially when you need to take a break when you work from home.
Build a Comfortable Atmosphere
Building a functional home office will not be enough. It also has to be comfortable, ensuring you can stay in the room for your work shift, which usually ranges from eight to nine hours in a day. Since you are staying that long inside your home office, comfort will be the priority. Besides proper seating and privacy, you will have to look at certain aspects to ensure a comfy atmosphere.
Temperature plays a vital role in comfort inside your home office, making it necessary to focus on the house’s HVAC system. You can contact an HVAC company, allowing you to adjust your home’s existing HVAC setup to accommodate the home office addition. The company can also install a standalone air conditioner to avoid major renovations. Of course, getting AC repairs from a professional will be vital should the device break down.
Lighting will also be vital to comfort inside the home office. Consider getting LED light bulbs, ensuring proper illumination while avoiding high electricity bills. Of course, you might want to have dimmer lighting to avoid eye strains. If that is the case, getting desk or floor lamps can allow you to limit lighting as you work. A comfortable atmosphere will be necessary for your home office, allowing you to feel satisfied when you work from home and not miss the actual workspace.
Create Productivity-Inducing Routines
If there is anything that could dissuade you from a remote work setup, it would be the productivity factor. Since everything in your personal life is accessible inside your house, you might find it challenging to focus on your job. Eating a snack from the fridge, playing video games, and interacting with your kids might all get in the way of your productivity, making it necessary to create routines that allow you to dedicate time to your work.
For eating habits, you might want to schedule your meals during breaktime. If you are alone, you can cook your dishes in advance. If you are short on time, you can order take outs at your favorite sushi restaurants or Italian cuisines. However, getting a mini fridge inside your home office will be ideal for quick snacks and beverages without having to leave the room. Of course, having your meals with your family will be essential, but you might want to make them quick during your work hours.
Since most of your kids might not be home during working hours, they might not be a problem. However, there might be times when you have to work during the weekends or they are inside the house due to canceled classes. You must enforce strict schedules during those moments, allowing you to focus at work better. If you have to take care of your child at home, you might want to enroll them in childcare daycare, ensuring they get attended to while you fulfill your work duties.
It might take time before you can create a productive routine when you work from home, but you will eventually sort it out. Nobody adjusts to a working environment fast. With a few trial-and-errors and a little bit of patience, you can make yourself productive at work inside the house.
Maintain a Clean Environment
The home office will be one of the busiest places inside your home, making it prone to mess. Paperwork, empty cans, leftovers, and other things might be filling up the room. Unfortunately, a cluttered and disorganized environment might ruin productivity and comfort inside your home office. If you want to maintain those aspects, you must ensure you clean the room every day.
Decluttering will be necessary, ensuring your office supplies and equipment remain organized and well-kept. You can assign them to their respective storage solutions, allowing you to focus more on your work instead of getting distracted by the mess you let get worse. Household chores like sweeping the floors or taking out the trash will also be essential for your home office to ensure a clean environment. Those tasks can prevent pests from getting inside the area. Unfortunately, it might be challenging to eradicate pests if they are already there, making it necessary to hire extermination services. They can keep the home office spotless, allowing you to benefit from a clean environment suitable for work productivity.
Get Creative with Decorations
The fun thing about having a home office is you can personalize it. A business office might have decorations, but they might not be suitable to your specific tastes and preferences. Quotes from your favorite athletes, posters of your favorite movies, and even inspirational messages that appeal to you better than others can all be part of your home office walls. You can search for those decorative elements online to make the decorating journey more efficient.
The room’s colors and patterns might also be tailor-fit to your preferences. You can have an interior designer work with you to design the area. If you have the creative eye for it, you can do the renovations yourself. There is also a case for adding indoor plants when you work from home. Those plants provide plenty of health benefits to people, including mental sharpness. They can improve ventilation, ensuring the room does not feel like a standard office cubicle. While decorations might not be as much of a priority as ensuring functionality inside the home office, they are an essential element to productivity when you work from home.
You might feel lucky to land a job that allows you to work from home. However, you might ensure you have the ideal environment inside the house for it. Without a proper remote work setup, you might encounter challenges that compromise your performance at work. While having a home office is not a guarantee that you’ll do good at work, it will surely help your remote work setup become a more seamless part of your day. Since it is your own home office, you can prepare for it however you want to.
