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Remote working. So unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few years you know just how prevalent this is becoming. Employees are switching a few days a week to work remotely, or even better, from a home office. All with good reason too with remote workers on average working 16.8 days more than their office based counterparts.
Most of us will be setting up a home office to work remotely and one of the things that I was impressed by was all the added benefits that came with setting up a home office space. So what are these benefits? Keep reading to find out more!
(Just a heads up a lot of people reading my blog are in the process of designing their own home office. If you want to save some of the painstaking time I did in designing my office, you can find my recommended products here)
An easy way to separate work and home life
So when I first started working remotely, one of the problems I ended up running into was just a lack of space. I would hop from the couch to the bed without really having a solid place to just sit down and focus on the task at hand.
This eventually escaped to just getting distracted at home and whacking on Netflix or even worse daytime T.V instead of, you know, doing my job.
One of the big benefits of having a home office is that it cuts out these distractions, giving you a place to focus. On top of this, by setting up a home office you’re setting yourself a very clear barrier between your home life and your work life.
If you live with people, letting them know that the home office is off bounds when you’re in there can go a long way to setting yourself up for success.
Speaking of which, if you’re interested in looking into noise cancellation you can check out my top picks for headphones here.
A quiet room you can use for multiple things
So home offices come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. Let’s face it, not all of us have huge rooms to have all to ourselves. That being said one of the benefits about setting up a home office space is how versatile it can be.
You can use the room for recording videos, music, use it as an art gallery or flip between all of these things on different days of the week.
With a little bit of planning you can go quite a long way and really set up your home office to be the multitasking room of the house.
Speaking of planning I’ve pulled together a resource page filled with everything you need for you home office but in my opinion the essentials are as follows:
- Desks (either standing or sitting)
- Laptop
- Office chair
- Storage
- WIfI boosters
Hopefully they should help set up your home office nicely
Increased productivity
A recent Airtasker study showed that employees who work remotely are 16.8 times more productive than their office based counterparts.
So why is this important? Well to put it likely employees who are more productive are much more likely to be earning more than their non productive colleagues.
On top of this people are generally only productive for about 2.8 hours per day before things really start to fall off.
To help explain some more of the key stats, I’ve put together an infographic below:
A shorter commute
Let’s paint a picture, It’s 6.30 am you heave yourself out of bed. Get on your local bus to work, get coached on, sit next to someone who smells stale and end up getting to work 20 minutes late because of a breakdown 5 mins away from your office.
Now imagine getting up at 8.59 walking into your home office and starting the day. It goes without saying that one of the biggest benefits is the lack of commute to the home office.
Most Americans spend at least 26 minutes commuting to their workplace. By cutting this time out you can really set yourself up for success or use the time you gained back more wisely.
Reduce excessive spending
One of the other major benefits of a home office is the lack of spending you will do from a home office.
I mean commuting every day adds up. You’re also going to be spending less on food as,most likely, you’ll have the time to cook from home.
Heck if you work from home regularly enough you might even be able to cut out childcare all together which can really break the bank and is only looking to increase.
Word of caution though, keep amazon closed during office hours, especially if you are the type of person who likes to buy a lot when they are at home.
No if your in the process of setting up your home office I’ve written a post about some of the hidden costs associated with remote working here.
Work according to your own schedule
So if you’re employed for an organisation and your remote working policy also has a flexible hours policy then you can pair these both up together from your home office and decide the number of hours you work or when exactly you work.
A lot of people are not early birds so if you’re more productive in the evenings or want a bit of time back to yourself to do some morning yoga then feel free.
This works even better for people who are self employed who have the ability to pick their own hours anyway.
Control what you wear
I’m only slightly afraid to admit that half the time when I’m working from my home office I’m still in my bed clothes.
It’s all about convenience and comfortably when it comes to working from your home office and seeing as you get to set the rules, wear whatever you feel comfortable in that also keeps you the most productive.
Increase your house value
One of the benefits people don’t talk about enough in my opinion with home offices is the increase in your house price.
While any renovation to your house is likely to increase your house price a little bit by building a home office in a loft you could potentially be looking at upwards of a 20% increase in your house value.
I mean imagine that, spend a few hundred pounds on a renovation and end up with thousands back.
I’ve actually written a post talking all about the best room to put your home office in which goes into more detail about those prices. You can find it here.
More family time
One of the massive benefits of a home office if you’re a parent is the valuable family time you get back.
What if you used the commuting time we talked about early to catch up with your kids about their day? Or visit your parents? Life moves fast and only gets faster the older you get so why not put those extra hours to the best use possible.
Unsure about what activities you can get upto with your kids that take under an hour? Check out the vid below:
It’s good for the environment
Climate change is a huge issue. Heck it’s been a huge issue for the past 40 years. Whilst things seem to be moving in the right direction we all still need to do our bit.
Luckily a home office can do this quite a bit. A recent study found that if all the remote workers went 100% remote working there would be 10 million few cars on the road.
Having a home office can massively help with this and is definitely worth thinking about
You are able to work remotely
Working remotely is an agreement set up by your employer and yourself that allows you to work from a location other than the main office headquarters.
This is so much easier to do if you have a home office space.
Let’s face it we all need a break from the office every now and then and having your own space to go to actually get your job done will definitely make your work more engaging.
A higher salary
A recent study showed that employees who work remotely and have a home office earn $4000 more than their home office counterparts.
They are also much more likely to be earning over $100,000 compared with other employees.
This is usually because of the savings in cost but it is also worth mentioning that a lot of micro businesses that are earning huge amounts of money are also usually based in a home office too.
Social status
So this is much harder to quantify but is still a significant benefit in my opinion.
Let’s face it, bringing your friends round to check out your brand new decked out office is a feeling that we all revel in, especially if we’ve done a good job and done it up nicely.
Sometimes it’s just the small things in life that get you through the day and having a home office might be just the thing you need to be the envy of all your friends
Customised for your personality
One of my favourite benefits about home office spaces is simply how easy they are to customise.
Your home office, more than any other room in your house, can give a glimpse into your personality, into what you like doing.
Want to have movie posters in your background… feel free!
Disposable skittle dispenser? Why not.
The choice really is up to you, now go revel in it!
Easy to update
Again similar to the point above home offices are notoriously easy to update
Other rooms often require huge changes with decor to get a brand new feeling but home offices are so much easier to adapt to your ever changing needs.
No longer happy with your office chair? Simply get a new one and it wont mess with the feng shui of your room.
I guarantee your home office will look completely different in 5 years to how it does now. Once again, if you’re interested in updating your office, you can check out everything I recommend here.
Improves you willpower
This is a bit of a psychological trick but trust me it works.
By simply having a home office you’re much more likely to use it and as such, stick to any project that starts in it.
Anyone who has bought a gym membership knows that even if you don’t use it, it’s only a matter of time before you pick it up again and the same goes for a home office, every time you walk past it in you house, you might feel like smashing out some for for a few mins.
The same applies to a home office, by having it in your house by default your much more likely to want to use it frequently – even when you’re not working.
Potential for tax deductions
One of the major benefits of a home office are the potential tax deductions. Particularly if you are self employed.
Now I am not a tax expert so please take this advice for what it is. But baby having a home office you can potally claim back expenses if they are used specifically for business purposes only.
Home offices usually directly fall into this category so long as you are not spending your time in your office doing other stuff.
Potential business expense
So what if you work for an employer.
The good news is that you can partly expense some of your bulls.
For example, if you use power in your home office you can expense a percentage of your monthly utility bills. If you use a lot of stationary specifically for your role in your home office again you might be able to expense this through.
Keeps you engaged
It’s a sad fact but it’s true, human beings get bored very easily., According to Tony Robbins at least we have the need to be both comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.
As such, working from a home office space or just outside the normal office for a day per week will really go a long way to helping you feel rejuvenated and just basically keeping you going in your role.
It can help reduce stress
So a recent study by flex jobs showed that employees who work remotely are less stressed and as such take fewer sick days than other employees.
I mean that’s huge, stress is often called the unseen killer so if there was any way to help tackle that I know I would want to run after it.
Very easy to visualise
Another great benefit of a home office is that they are just so easy to plan out.
3d Interior design platforms are all the rage nowadays so designing them has never been easier.
On top of this using tools like a visual board attached to a corkboard can go a long way to keep you focused on how you want to design your office space.
On top of this once you have your home office, if you want to use the space to visualise your upcoming goals it gives you a nice place to reflect and just do what you need to do.
Now I’ve actually summarised what I feel as though the best interior design platform is, You can read up more about that here.
Potential for a multi-use room
So we talked about this a little bit earlier on but with the use of folding desks and chairs you can maximise the space in your home office for loads of different things,
Let’s say you want a space to do yoga in, simply fold down your office furniture, place it against one of your walls and use the remaining space to do what you need to.
It makes starting a business easier
Easily one of the biggest stresses business holders have is where they are going to keep their office.
Luckily with the advent of technology it is easier than ever to start your business from a home and grow accordingly.
Why spend money on rent when you can start building your empire from home? My recommendation by the way if you are focused on making money when working from home would be with an income school which you can find out more about here.
You can get in shape
Standing desks are also becoming more and more popular over the past few years with many people topping for them instead of, you know, running a marathon on their lunch breaks
We all know the benefits of standing desks with
The same should go with you if you are trying to watch your waistline.
Now I’ve written an entire blog post about standing desks but my recommendation would be the Flexispot which you can find more about here.
It makes interior design easy
Let’s face it, a brand new home refurb can be a scary thing to do, I mean redesigning all your rooms, thinking of themes to go with.
The good news is that you can use your home office as a guinea pig.
As your office space is lily going to be much smaller use it as a way to jump start and get your creative juices flowing. Once your office is done you might find yourself wanting to start on the rest of the house.
It can help set goals
So we touched on this bird fly but having a home office makes it much easier to set goals and objectives and keep you in line for the projects you are working on.
Having something like a white board or visual board that you can attach things to will really help.
So how exactly do you set goals?The best way to do this would be my setting SMART objectives – a quick recap for anyone unfamiliar can find them below:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time bound
Improve your organisation
One of the things I talked about earlier was how I would jump from sofa to sofa and not really get stuff done prior to investing in a home office,
The same goes for my organisation. Sadly until I had a place to put all my documents, bank statements and general files in one place I was a little lost.
By having the dedicated space keeps me focused on and everything where I know exactly where to look when I need to.
It will make you stay at your roles longer
Another impressive study from flex jobs showed that people who have the ability to work remotely end up staying in their roles for much longer with most people who work remotely/have a home office being in their current role for the past 5 years.
With the advent of Gen Yers’ in the workforce who (myself included) sometimes struggle to go and stay in one position for one year, having a home office can really help you get much further in your career then you might have anticipated.
You can work on your hobbies
Another great benefit of a home office is that it simply gives you space to work on your hobbies. Your home office doesn’t just have to be all desks and chairs.
Instead try to think of it as a hub for everything you’re passionate about. One of the ways I like to do this is to give you your dream business… what would it be? How would it look? And then design your office after the principles and things that are the most interesting to you.
It cultivates your skills
Finally the last benefit i wanted to talk to you about is how having a home office keeps you in the game.
What do I mean by this?
Simply put having a home office means that at some point, your likely to use it, likely to become great at something
Regardless of whether you decide to start your own business or not, the fact that you would have taken the steps to set up a home office and just have a space you’ve decided to pursue your passions in really takes you a step closer to hitting your goals.
The downside to a home office
So this post has been super positive but it is worth mentioning that there are a few drawbacks to working from a home office. Luckily I’ve put them together in infographic:
One more thing
Finally a lot of people reading my blog want to know what products I recommend for a home office/remote working. You can find out my recommendations here and learn how I make money whilst working remotely on the side here.
The content on this on this site has been written by Fehed Nicass who has over a decades worth of experience in sales and has worked remotely for the past 2 years.