Working from homeAre you a real professional?

Why work from home?

The four main reasons that I work from home!

ProfessionalBusinesslikeExpertSkilled

Productivity

Professional Image

Profile

Keeping up to date

Networking

Maintaining momentum

This presentation was made to the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Society for Technical Communication on 3 October 2002. The narration is a shortened version of the original presentation. For a full transcript, you may view the slide notes.

Working from home are you a real professional?Why do I ask the question? I ask it because it is one that many people working from home face. What do I mean by it? Its a very open question. According to the thesaurus professional means businesslike or expert. Professionalism means skill.

So lets get back to the question. Are you a real professional if you work from home? I think that this starts with your attitude. First and foremost - how do you see yourself?Secondly how do you want others to see you? How will you influence their perceptions?Thirdly - how do you intend to maintain your professionalism?

But first, lets look at why you might want to work from home.

Perhaps you hate getting up early in the morning for the long commute into work. Perhaps you have a physical reason that makes it harder to work in a traditional office, or work traditional hours. I remember when I was pregnant with my first, I had to go and lie down in the back seat of the car at lunchtime because I was so tired. I was quite capable of doing the work if I could just get a bit of rest every now and then. But I tell you what, that back seat was incredibly uncomfortable at 8 months pregnant!!Kids are a life-changing factor that often become the driver for working from home.Maybe you cant get everything finished with all the noise and distractions at the office home offers some peace and quiet to get it all done.

Can I have a show of hands for those of you that work from home either occasionally or full-time. Keep your hands up if you are self-employed and primarily home-based.Is there anyone else who does not work from home themselves, but works for a company that encourages home-based work?Does anyone want to share their reasons for working from home?Here are my four main reasons Christopher, James, Liam and Breanna.I first started working from home shortly after Christopher, my eldest son, was born. I had a very forward thinking General Manager who encouraged me to set up a home-based office I was the first in the company to work from home. He recognised the importance of maintaining my profile, so he did insist that I come in to the office once a week, just to remind people that I was there! The biggest challenge for me was that I was in sales at the time, so frequently had customers ringing me at rather inopportune times. Many a contract was negotiated while breastfeeding a baby and hoping that it didnt make any noise.

I have had various stints of working from home as an employee for two different companies one was a large Swiss-based engineering and medical company and the other a small local occupational health and safety consultancy.

For the last 2 years I have operated my own business from home. I have tried to be a real professional within the constraints of the demands of parenthood and working from the family home. Let me assure you that while I know all the theory, I have not run a perfect business by any stretch of the imagination. I am here today to show you that even within some pretty hefty constraints, it is possible to be successful if you focus on some key factors in being a real professional.

A common trap for people working from home is not to address all of these facets of being a real professional. Perhaps we are used to being considered an expert at work. Or we are highly skilled at what we do. When we start working from home, it is easy to rely on this and neglect the requirements of being businesslike.

Having done an MBA, and managed both a sales division and manufacturing division, I knew what was required to run a business well.

My problem was simply that I didnt have the time to do everything properly. I went from having a full infrastructure, with a secretary, accountant, receptionist, quality manager to having to do everything myself. I knew what to do, but didnt have the time or the energy to do it all. For a while I relied almost completely on my skill to uphold my professionalism. I had the somewhat arrogant attitude that people could take me as I was because they always got a good product.

I have learned that it is not enough to be good at what you do. I was fortunate enough not to have to learn the hard way, but by watching others. I was involved in a project that involved coordinating a large number of writers and editors nationally. A lot of these people worked from home. It was interesting to see the different levels of skill, expertise and businesslike approach used by these home-based self employed people. It became clear to me that skill and expertise are not enough on their own. To succeed in the long term, you need to have a businesslike approach to your work.

Thats what we are here to look at in the remaining time. We cant possibly cover everything in such a short time, but the areas that I plan to look at are productivity, professional image, profile, keeping up to date, networking and maintaining momentum and your sanity.

My productivity at home on a good day is absolutely fantastic far better than I could achieve in an office environment. On a bad day productivity in the paid work arena can be pretty appalling. If I am feeling unmotivated, I find it pretty hard to ignore the distractions of home. The absolute freedom of having nobody watching over me can also make it pretty tempting to go out and do something completely non-work related.

But the absolute magic of working from home and being self employed is that I can. I can go with the flow and make the most of these days to get other things done. If I feel like going shopping for shoes I dont have to ask anybodys permission I just do it. I tend to work in bursts of energy and in between, I need to recharge the batteries doing something less demanding. In a traditional office environment I would probably fritter away the time on those blue days but I would still feel obliged to be in the office. What a waste! At home I can turn my attention to something that doesnt need much brainpower so I am still getting something done. Or if I want to, I can simply have a nap. I often find the break away from the task gets me re-energised to start again. I must admit, I never thought that hanging out the washing or doing the shopping were energisers, but it is amazing how refreshing it can be to do something like that when you have been staring at a computer screen for days on end!

Of course, I have to make up for the time I spend on other things. This means that you will often find me in front of the computer screen at 1 am in the morning. This suits me though. I am a natural night owl and generally produce my most creative work in the wee small hours of the morning. I have to say though that this is not particularly compatible with having small children, so my creativity is somewhat affected, to say the least!

One very important aspect of productivity is actually looking after yourself to keep up your productive capacity. In other words, you have to feed the goose that lays the golden eggs. Within a workplace, your employer is responsible for your health and safety and you get sick days off when you need them.

When you work from home, your health and safety may be neglected even if you are an employee. As a self-employed person, it is very easy to forget to look after your health and safety. I teach and write occupational health and safety courses, but even I am guilty of spending far too long in front of a computer screen when a deadline looms I imagine that the same is true of many of you. I have spent quite a substantial sum of money on physiotherapists and myotherapists to fix my neck problems.

Make sure that you have decent equipment at home a good ergonomic chair, appropriately set up computer screen and keyboard, and take breaks. I used to try to make sure that housework did not distract me now I go and sweep the path or hang out the washing as a break from the keyboard. By integrating my home duties and my paid work in that way, I can cope far better with the overall workload this not only has the original benefit of giving me a break, but also reduces my stress levels.

If you are interested in some information on occupational health and safety for home-based workers, contact me by email and I will send you some information. If you have any employees working in your home, or from their own home, looking after their occupational health and safety is your obligation. Next on the agenda is your professional image.

When I started working from home, I went from this - a well dressed, in control businesswoman to this thank goodness videophones havent caught on!

Most people were fairly understanding of my situation and if I was caught out with a screaming baby, they were quit happy for me to ring them back. Its not that great for the professional image though. As I said earlier, I relied very much on my expertise and skill to uphold my professionalism.

At this stage I was still an employee with a large company. Although the general manager was very forward thinking and family friendly, some others werent. I remember vividly a rather heated discussion with the deputy general manager after a sales trip. I had gone to enormous lengths to organise the interstate trip my mother had come over from New Zealand to look after Christopher and my husband had taken time off work. We had driven up to Sydney over the weekend, stayed in a caravan park cabin instead of my usual hotel and I had a daily allowance instead of an open expense account. Overall, I had saved the company considerable money on the trip and had worked really hard managing to visit a good number of clients.

But this is not how the deputy general manager saw it. As far as he was concerned, I had taken a paid holiday on the company. He then went on to imply that working from home was just an excuse to stay home and play with the baby. He certainly didnt see the reality that I was in fact being even more productive than I had previously. As far as he was concerned, my professional image was completely shot by the sounds of a baby in the background and my lack of profile in at the office.

One of my clients rang my home phone number on my day off and got my 10 year old son not a big problem, as he knew it was my home phone number. But when he tried my office phone number and got the same child on the phone, he was not quite so impressed with my sons receptionist skills! We now have a rule that the children dont answer the office phone.

Your image is a major issue if you are a home-based employees. Well look at the issues for both people without children and for parents.

As a parent, you may have the kids erupt into major arguments just as you pick up the phone. Or you might have your two year old pick up the extension in the middle of an important phone conversation. One way to get around this is to have childcare outside the home for at least some of the working day. I have my two year old looked after during school hours three days a week. My four year old is actually very accommodating of my work and is quite happy to amuse himself after kindergarten. He is extremely considerate and is very careful to be very quiet if he comes into my office and sees me on the phone. I think that this very much depends on the personality of the child it certainly wouldnt work with some of his friends!

I also have a business phone with only one handset in the office. This means that I wont get the two year old picking up the other extension.

As an employee without children, you may have a slight advantage in not having noisy kids in the background when you answer the phone. You do still need to put in an effort to make sure that you maintain your professional image. The way you answer the phone is very important. I use my business name and my full name when I answer my business phone. Even for my home phone I use my full name when answering it quite a few of my longstanding customers have my home phone number so that they can ring me at any time. You need to think about whether this suits you for me, integrating my work and home life fully suits me fine. For many, it is important to be able to draw the line between home and work. Or maybe it doesnt bother you, but your partner or family are going crazy with work intruding onto their time with you.

What about while you are on the phone. While you may find it very convenient to be able to chat on the cordless phone and go to the toilet at the same time, the sound of a flushing toilet may be somewhat offputting to the person on the other end of the phone!

Or perhaps you like to work with your CD player blaring out 70s music. Is this what you want your customers to hear?!

What do you do about answering the phone if you are not there? If I am not available to answer my business phone, it goes through to a voicemail answering service. If you prefer to have a real person answer the phone, there are many answering services available. Again, your professional image is certainly enhanced if you are able to do this but it is often a question of budget. You need to make a choice on this based on the type of business you are in and the customers you have.

Other things to consider are your business card cheap or home printed ones can cost you business. It is also easy to get used to dressing down jeans and a faded sweatshirt might be alright when you are working at home, but if you pop down to the bank and run into your best customer, you might not feel quite the consummate professional you want to appear. I try to stay in smart casual clothes I will put the fibre pile jacket and the slippers on at home, but usually try to swap before going out. I have been caught out in runners once on the way to an appointment fortunately had a spare pair of shoes in the car, so managed to make a quick change they werent the ideal match, but better than runners!

Profile is another issue for both the home-based employee and the home-based business.

As a home-based employee it is very easy to lost profile with the company. The disadvantages are that people might perceive that you dont work as hard this has disastrous effects at performance appraisal time. You might even get passed up for promotion. You might not get invited to social functions not due to any malice, but just because out of sight is out of mind.

There are a few things you can do to help maintain your profile. One is to make sure that you do put in regular appearances at the office. Another is to make regular phone calls just to check in and catch up with what is happening and simply to remind people that you are there. Sending emails nice and early in the morning can impress the boss. It means that they know you are on board and working not just having a sleep in.

Written reports of your activities also help to enhance your profile and let people know what you are achieving. If, like me, you find the office environment distracting, you may find that your productivity goes up dramatically when you are working from home. Let people know! Dont be afraid to blow your own trumpet about how much you are achieving.

Make sure you are completely upfront about any time that you do take off. You dont need to let everyone know that you are going to little Johnnys kindergarten concert, but as long as the boss knows, you are not going to be in the embarrassing situation of feeling caught out if someone happens to see you.Keeping up to date is another facet of maintaining your professionalism. I still cringe at one of my blunders which was caused by not keeping myself up to date. I teach occupational health and safety and shortly after my daughter was born, I was asked to go and do a short two hour session for some VCE students. I established a really good rapport with them and Im sure that they particularly remembered the long discussion we had over the right to sue an employer. I went to great lengths to explain that the common law right to sue had been removed by the Kennett government. A few months later, I was writing an online course in occupational health and safety and to my horror discovered that I had been wrong the right to sue had been reinstated a few months before my teaching session.Normally I hope that people remember what I taught them this time I prayed that they had forgotten every word I had uttered on that topic!

Another problem with maintaining our skill level is the lack of informal contact with others. In a traditional workplace a lot of informal learning takes place just by being in the same building as others not to mention the training that most employees get as part of their normal work routine. As a home based employee it is easy to miss out on the informal learning this erodes your skill and therefore your professionalism over time. As a self employed home based professional, the situation is often even more challenging. There is no one looking after your professional development it is completely up to you and it costs both time and money.

I put a lot of effort into keeping up to date. I try to do a formal course on a regular basis, but also try to make the most of the free information and seminars that are available. Often it is not so much the content of the seminars, but the people that you meet there and the informal discussions that you have that keep you up to date. Which brings us to our next subject - networkingNetworking is vital to the survival of any small business. For a home-based self-employed person it is not only vital to your business survival, but might also be vital for your sanity! It can be very isolating working from home, especially if you are working on projects that dont require much outside contact. Networking is a way of not only growing the business, but also breaking the isolation.

Even for the home-based employee, networking internally is a useful skill. If you make sure that you build and maintain an internal network, not only does it help to maintain your profile, but it also keeps you in the loop for any information that is circulating informally. While escaping internal politics is one of the nice things about working from home, it can sometimes be helpful to be in the know especially if you have any ambition to move ahead in the organisation. Dont underestimate the power of the secretary or the office junior for keeping you up to date with things. You will often find that these are the people who make sure you are invited to social functions, or do that little bit extra to keep you up to date.

With external networking, follow up is the most important part. It is not enough to bounce from contact to contact you need to follow up. Most importantly, try to look for opportunities to help others. Dont just look for how they can help you. What goes out comes back tenfold, so look for ways to give. Finally how do you maintain the momentum?Every now and then, I find that I reach a low point where I have plenty of work, but am not motivated to do it. Or I can see that I am running out of work, but dont feel motivated to getting out and finding more. This is often because I have been concentrating so hard on being productive that I havent looked after my capacity to produce. In other words, Ive been so busy getting the golden eggs that I forgot to feed the goose.

Everyone will have a different way of recharging the batteries, or finding a new lease of life.

I find that some of the ways that I maintain the momentum is to Take on a new challengeCommit to a deadlineFind someone to work withGet out and meet people at business functionsGo and listen to inspiring speeches

Make sure you take the time to tune into your own energy levels. If you find that they are flagging, try to be proactive and choose to do something that works for you.

And dont forget the reasons that you started working from home in the first place. If it was to have more time with the kids make sure that you take that time. If you wanted to have the flexibility to travel when it suits you, set up your systems so that you can. Get a laptop, learn how to access your emails over the web, and go and sit on a beach in Byron Bay while you work on your strategic direction. You might not want to take your laptop to the beach, but you might find you get twice as much done the next week when you are back! Theres nothing like an airline ticket for a holiday destination to get you focused on meeting your deadlines.

If you find it too lonely, but dont want to give up the benefits of working from home, maybe you can take on a short term contract working in an office environment.

Dont let work take over and override your original reasons for starting a home-based business or negotiating with your boss to let you work from home.

But whatever you choose to do, do it with style. Be a real professional whether you are working from home, the beach or the holiday house. Be an expert, keep your skills up to date and most important, approach everything you do in a businesslike manner.

Thanks for your attention. I hope it has helped you clarify your own perception of what it takes you to be a real professional.

And now, please take the time to look at the books Anthea has brought, or the information on our public speaking topics. Both Anthea and I are happy to answer any questions you might have about working from home.