Home office: What sounds promising for long-suffering commuters and open-plan office inhabitants as a haven of leisure and quality of life can also be the exact opposite. Therefore, consider carefully who commits to working from home. In fact, the home workplace can be an attractive and constructive environment for daily business. However, there are many pitfalls along the way. Below is a small guide on how to circumvent them.
- Origin and advantages of working from home
- 1. The person in the office chair
- 2. The office chair, the desk, and the paperwork
- 3. The right technology in the workplace
- 4. A private room, or at least a taboo area
- 5. Adherence to rules in multi-person households
Origin and advantages of working from home
Cool headwinds against the "home office" principle are blowing precisely from the depths of Silicon Valley. And from the very top: Marissa Mayer, the CEO of "Yahoo," consistently ordered all employees back to their desks in the internet service provider's corporate headquarters. According to her reasoning, working at Yahoo is more than just a day-to-day job. It's about collaboration that is only possible in the "Yahoo" offices. Remarkably, the ability for programmers, agents, journalists, and everyone else who needs little more than a computer and a fast internet connection for their work to operate from a home office is primarily due to the inventions from Marissa Mayer's industry.
The achievements in broadband internet technology and the corresponding software to use it constructively have paved the way for knowledge workers without direct customer contact to move their workplace entirely or temporarily to their own four walls. Or anywhere at all: creative professionals, developers, and programmers, in particular, have since been operating in a kind of wonderland of work: whether on the beach, in a café, or on a mountain peak – where ideas and energies flow best, the young, hip bosses of countless internet startups let their employees work.
It doesn't even require a free-spirited foundation to view the "home office" principle favorably from a business perspective. The advantages, even for large companies, are obvious, especially in times of steadily rising rents: corporate headquarters do not need to build new facilities or lease additional space even with good order books. Branches can potentially be entirely eliminated, and experienced employees who cannot come to the office due to a temporary injury can still be meaningfully integrated into the business.
For employees, the advantages are also numerous: apart from the small freedoms of a workday at the home desk and the time and cost savings from not commuting, working parents can look after a sick child or a family member who suddenly needs care. It also no longer necessarily costs a day of vacation when craftsmen or the chimney sweep announce their arrival, or the car needs to go to the workshop. Not to mention the positive effects of not having a daily commute…
Nevertheless, after a few years of video conferences instead of meeting rooms, meter distances instead of rush hour commutes, and slippers instead of dress shoes, we are now a little wiser. Namely, that a home office only represents an improvement under certain circumstances. Leaving aside the team spirit that Marissa Mayer prioritized in her considerations: there are many things that can go wrong in a home office if one is not careful.
IT'S ALL A MATTER OF CIRCUMSTANCES
Of course, how "dangerous" a home office can be depends entirely on the profession to be practiced from home. Furthermore, there's a huge difference between whether working from home is meant to complement an otherwise structured office routine on a daily basis, or whether a permanent home office worker is regularly integrated into the company via video conference. It's an entirely different matter whether a self-employed person or freelancer has to handle everything from accounting to production within their own four walls.
First Point: The Human in the Office Chair
To find a suitable order of points to consider, an egocentric perspective is exceptionally permitted. Because the first and biggest problem sits in the office chair itself: the working human. How manifold are the distractions that are literally closer at hand in one's own four walls than in the office building. It starts with the nice things, like the current book on the coffee table that looks so much more tempting than the balance sheet on the desk. Or the brand-new camera drone that's so much more fun to control with a smartphone than it is to make sense of a tax return with a calculator.
Aside from that, even housework proves to be a potential disturber. It suddenly seems – keyword "tax return" – comparatively more appealing. Most people know this from their school or student days: the cleanest rooms always belonged to those who had to study for the most important school assignments or exams. And finally, there are the small distractions from the big work that one gladly falls for: the short article in a lifestyle magazine, the spontaneous chat with a neighbor, or the endless excursion into private internet worlds. The panacea for this: concentration and discipline.
For example, it helps greatly to set a specific framework for yourself. Set a clearly defined work goal until the end of the day and keep it in mind. It is important not to overdo it and to set achievable "landmarks." Otherwise, frustration threatens in the short term and burnout in the long term. Agree with yourself on regular breaks, a start and an end to your workday – and, even more importantly, stick to it.
Second point: The office chair, the desk, and the paperwork
As in the office, ergonomic standards also apply in the home office. Of course, the home environment invites you to display some inherited or favorite pieces in the study with cozier lighting. But since eight hours on an old wooden chair will not necessarily become more comfortable just because it was inherited from ancestors, and an excessively high designer table simply remains an excessively high table: a height-adjustable office chair and an adjustable desk should form the core of the home workspace. Nowadays, few compromises need to be made in terms of style; the lounge or living office chair collections in specialist shops now look less like functional furniture and more like quite stylish club or even living room furnishings.
When positioning your desk, focus less on extravagance and more on good lighting. The desk should be at a 90-degree angle to a window; the main light from outside should fall on the monitor from the side, to minimize reflections. Don't skimp on suitable blinds that can ideally regulate the lighting conditions in the room – even if curtains certainly look cozier.
When choosing your office chair, it's best to rely on the advice of a specialist dealer – the chair should be at least height-adjustable and allow for adjustments so that your feet, seat, and elbows can be parallel to each other. The desktop of the workspace should ideally be tiltable, but in any case, height-adjustable. A sufficient height is currently considered to be 72 centimeters, and the work surface should be approximately 1.5 meters by 80 centimeters. Position your printer, scanner, and backup solutions on a separate "tech" table.
Third point: The right technology in the workplace
The next imaginary circle around the home workplace includes computers, printers, routers, and telephones. A wireless internet connection and corresponding end devices are now standard. Depending on whether you are an independent home worker or an employee, a dedicated telephone line to the home office is also recommended to have a separate line for business calls. Especially if there are teenagers in the house who are just discovering the joys of telecommunications with their friends, many routes to the global (telephone) network are advantageous. Here, as in the office, you should rely on professional standards.
Therefore, especially when it comes to the monitor, choose a professional model that fully meets current standards regarding contrast, brightness, and resolution. You should also make as few compromises as possible with lighting: task lighting should be bright but not glaring – that's the rule of thumb. Avoid reflections, glare, and invest in a good desk lamp. Position your monitor 50 to 70 centimeters from your eyes. Remember a professional backup solution and save yourself the feeling of having lost valuable data and files due to a hard drive failure.
When it comes to keyboards and mice, focus on ergonomics rather than design. Don't skimp on storage space in your study, so that your work documents don't have to leave the home office and are always at hand. Be sure to find out what standards your employer has regarding "data protection"; also, take care of appropriate insurance. To put it casually: Are you insured if you break your leg on the way from the printer back to your desk?
Fourth point: A separate room, or at least a taboo area
Office chair, desk, computer, and all peripherals are ideally located in a separate room. The biggest advantage of a study is having its own door. It can become an important medium of communication in the household – more on that later. A separate room primarily ensures peace and quiet for working and telephoning, especially in a multi-person household. Even if only one person lives in the household, a separate study makes sense: the extra room becomes the workplace, clearly separated from the rest of the living space. The clearest advantage: business is business and private is private – if you can see your desk from the couch, you can't properly switch off.
Even if you don't have a separate room for your home office, use a room divider or a partition to create a certain separation from your private life. If you can spare an entire room for your work, make sure it remains untouched by the effects of private life. In short: your record, book, CD, or DVD collection can be on the shelf if there's still enough space for work materials.
Nevertheless, don't forgo a personal touch: those who enjoy going to work – even if it's within their own four walls – are happier in the long run. While practicality takes precedence over style, with a little thought, a nice compromise between practical and cozy can certainly be found. According to experts, the optimal room temperature is 22 degrees Celsius and the average humidity is 50 percent – plants can help with this.
Fifth point: Adherence to rules in multi-person households
The start of any home office planning involves a small family meeting: what does a closed door mean, what does a slightly ajar door mean, and what does a wide-open door mean? Alternatively: do the children even have access to the office in the morning, under what conditions can they enter in the afternoon, and what is the sign for "Only if it's a matter of life and death!"? Experience shows that a person's own partners cause more problems with privacy for those working from home. For example, a housewife naturally thinks practically when she assigns the working husband the task of hanging laundry while she picks up the children. But if mowing the lawn, shopping, and vacuuming are added to that, the workday suddenly has not eight, but only five or six hours.
Establish clear boundaries from the outset: clearly define your working hours and distinctly separate your professional life from your private life. Of course, you can take advantage of the proximity of your work to your private life and do household chores during your lunch break that you wouldn't otherwise have time for. However, as soon as your private life affects your professional presence, the "home office" principle is at risk or has already failed. Speak about this with your partner, and do so very clearly. If you look around on the internet, you'll find plenty of reports indicating that working from home leads to severe turmoil in relationships.
The biggest problem cited is the perception that the partner working from home is, so to speak, always free and therefore has to take on more household tasks. Talk openly about this issue and agree that working from home is regulated just as bindingly as working in an office building.
In summary, working from a home office can be full of landmines. But if they are taken seriously and defused with care and understanding, the "home office" principle is one that clearly offers an improved quality of life.