Whether you’re starting your own company from scratch or just relaxing your working arrangements with your current employers, working from home is an exciting step in your career plans. However, in saying this, it’s also a lot of hard work and you’ll likely have to build a home office. In this post, we take a look at what you should require and consider when building a home office.
Natural Light
Natural light is one of the most important elements of any home office. If your office is dark, dingy and unappealing, you won’t want to work in it. No matter how tempting it may be to take your laptop and work in the living room, this will harm your productivity. You’ll only end up getting distracted by the television and the radio.
As a result, you should make your office as bright and airy as possible. Paint or wallpaper with neutral and light colors and enhance the window space. You should also ensure that this window opens to allow air in for circulation. This isn’t an issue if you’re in a spare bedroom, but can be troublesome if you’re in an attic or loft. However, fear not. A large Velux or high window can be opened easily using a linear window actuator, like the ones available from Rocburn. This way you can create a light, airy, attractive space you actually want to work in. It will increase your productivity hugely.
Safety
As well as making the space pleasant to work in, you’ll also have to make it safe. Although you’re likely to have house alarms and other safety features, it’s likely that you’ll need additional safety features for your office. The types of safety feature you’ll need are dependent on exactly what you have in the office and are likely to be even stricter if you have children.
If you have customer information in the office, then you’ll need to ensure you comply with data protection laws. Ensure that you have a lock for the door and a separate filing cabinet that has a lock on it for really sensitive information. If you’re handling money, a safe is also advisable.
Professionalism
Finally, ensure your office is professional. A couple of family photos are still fine, but don’t mix business with pleasure. You’ll appreciate this should a client or customer ever visit. Creating the correct first impression is vital when you’re doing business.
You can improve your professionalism externally, too. Ensure your home phone either has a business voicemail or use your mobile. You can even use some software so that your phone number is displayed as a landline, but it rings through to your mobile. Genius.
Take these things into consideration when creating your home office and you should end up with a great space.