Courtney Cachet: How To Work From Home And Be Productive, Happy and Fabulous!

Courtney Cachet: How To Work From Home And Be Productive, Happy and Fabulous!

When I was growing up, I don't remember people having home offices. I do remember the crazy longoffice hours people worked back then. Fast forward 15 years and that's just not how the world works anymore. Even the most successful people rarely work office hours like that. Not because they're not working just as hard, but because everyone is working everywhere. Between laptops and smart phones, it's all covered. Most people who have any additional square footage to spare are using it towards a home office. You save money, you have healthier snacks (usually) and can have your dog snuggling at your feet. Awesome! Throw in a little Facebook, Twitter and Net-A-Porter and we are on all the time! We use less secretaries, more Wi-Fi. Less face to face meetings, more Skype. Less lunches, more conference video chats. It is how we live now. This is indeed the new normal.

So You Want To Telecommute? Here's How To Convince Your Boss - Forbes

So You Want To Telecommute? Here's How To Convince Your Boss - Forbes

Thinking about telecommuting but not sure how to discuss the topic with your boss? A reader recently contacted me and asked for advice. Here is our discussion with suggestions on how to handle the topic with your manager.

Avoid work-at-home scams - Special Sections - ReviewJournal.com

Avoid work-at-home scams - Special Sections - ReviewJournal.com

BBB warns about " Work at Home" opportunities | CJOnline.com

BBB warns about " Work at Home" opportunities | CJOnline.com

How to make a work-at-home business succeed - MarketWatch

How to make a work-at-home business succeed - MarketWatch

This small business owner runs a successful business at home. She confirms you do not have to be in an office to get work done and be efficient.

creative-telecommuting-can-add-to-satisfaction-at-work – USATODAY.com

creative-telecommuting-can-add-to-satisfaction-at-work – USATODAY.com

This telecommuter was able to work at home even though he lived in another country. He began telecommuting once a week at his current job which convinced his employers it would work. I recommend any person interested in working at home start slow to make sure it will work and then transcend to full telecommuting.

Telecommuting Benefits

Telecommuting refers to working from home or a location of one’s choice using latest technology tools like mobile, phone and internet. This is a method highly suitable for home office location, virtual teams and jobs that can be done without any physical co-location. This is highly preferred for people with constraints on travel due to location proximity, costs, and personal situation like health, managing family, and kids. This approach provides flexibility to employees and small business owners to perform business activity without coming to office physically. The workers who use this facility are called telecommuters, no mad commuters or web commuters.

The telecommuting is to set to increase 33% for technology jobs and 65% for public sector jobs. Occasional telecommuters accounted to 17.8 million.

How it works?

This varies across companies and industries. This is more prominent in technology and communications industries where IT systems and technology can enable people to work remotely without any physical presence. Also it is a policy within the organization to allow or disallow telecommuting. This requires extensive trust on people and managing them with clear goals and measurements. Many organizations find it challenging to implement especially larger groups which require constant interactions over face to face. The organizations which encourage telecommuting are more open and flexible in nature. Their policies are usually employee centric and create a sense of ownership by offering flexibility on telecommuting. There is no fixed mechanism of defining a telecommuting policy as it has varied adoption across industries.

It operates on the following ways:

1. Clearly defining goals and measurements among manager and employee.
2. Identify and carve out work that reduces dependency of physical access among employees, like standalone contribution.
3. Develop trust and virtual team work among team members to operate with each other in a seamless fashion.
4. Constant feedback and discussion with the virtual team member on measurements of the objectives.
5. Creative team interaction approach (like tele presence, video conference) to make them feel like to be part of the team.

Key advantages:

1. Offers flexibility to employees to choose where they need to work from and deliver the business results.
2. Drives employee satisfaction on the needed hour like managing family, kids, disabilities and commuting long distances every day.
3. Instills ownership and motivation through virtual team working model.
4. Saves physical facility cost per employee for the organization. The savings are up to $20,000 per year per employee.
5. Reduces attrition and staff turnover rate due to re-location reasons.
6. Saves environment by lesser traffic, energy saving at work and green house emissions
7. Potential saving of $650 billion overall if 40% of compatible jobs adopt to telecommuting approach
8. This is proven to be one of the best models for operating virtual teams across geographies.
9. Highly suited for home based businesses like network and multi level marketing methods.

In summary, telecommuting is one of the best ways of working in a virtual team to accomplish business objectives. It is considered as a modern way of working among knowledge workers. The adoption rates vary between organization and industries. It requires maturity and understanding from employee and manager to work in a manner which drives results.

Better Business: New protections for people seeking to work from home » The Commercial Appeal

Better Business: New protections for people seeking to work from home » The Commercial Appeal

No company can guarantee any person a job or success if they are not the hiring company. And if they are hiring you, the employer will never ask you to pay anything upfront. Running a business is a lot of hard work to be successful you will need to put in a lot time, money and sweat.

Creative telecommuting can add to worker satisfaction | The Salt Lake Tribune

Creative telecommuting can add to worker satisfaction | The Salt Lake Tribune

Telecommuting can be very good for both the employers and workers. Not only can telecommuting save money and time, it can help workers be more productive and less stress.