January seems like the ideal month to work from home – dark mornings, dark nights, cold busy commutes – who wouldn’t want to avoid all that?!
But when you work from home, it can be all too easy to blur the lines between work-life and home-life, which can not only kill productivity, but can also make you feel like you never get a break from work.
So here are five top tips to separate business and pleasure.
Ever considered working from home? Not sure how to broach the subject with your boss? Or maybe you’re an employer wondering whether it’s something you can realistically offer employees? In any case, it’s almost Work From Home Week, which means now is the perfect time to find out whether telecommuting can work for you.
If you’re unsure about the benefits of working from home, you’re considering offering employees the opportunity, or even thinking of pulling existing work from home benefits, here’s why you should get involved in next week’s awareness campaign.
As a business owner, you’ll be keen to attract and retain the best talent, and offering employees the chance to work from home is a good way to go about it – not only will your people appreciate the flexibility, it could actually increase productivity.
But before you offer staff the chance to work remotely, you need to make sure it’s right for your business and ease your way into it – here’s how…
If you want to successfully work from home, you need to make sure you have the all the same equipment, apps, and logins you have in the office – there are few things more frustrating than spending half the day trying get things up and running, and constantly phoning IT to make sure you have the right logins.
So once you’ve got the work laptop sorted and the VPN, here are some essential work from home apps to make your work from home life even easier…
Repetitive strain injuries (RSI) are among the most common workplace injuries – the TUC (Trade Union Congress) has stated half-a-million UK workers have reported symptoms that add up to a collective loss of 5.4 million working days each year.
Added to that, six workers will leave their job every day due to chronic RSI.
It’s estimated this costs UK industry anywhere between £5 billion and £10 billion every year.
Have you ever taken a conference call while commuting? How about when out shopping? Or lying in bed? If so, you’re not alone, as a recent study from career website eFinancialCareers found that over half of us (54%) don’t pay full attention when on a conference call.
Bahrain is one of the most important economic partners and bases for UK companies in the Gulf and the two nations have always had a very strong bilateral commercial relationship.
It can be notoriously difficult to do business in certain areas of the Middle East but Bahrain is relatively relaxed, having the freest economy in the area and the most liberalised in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
(Check out the GCC website here for a look at how the internet used to look – looks like something you’d get from an Alta Vista search).
Around 100 UK companies have set up base in Bahrain as the country is a major trading hub and financial centre in the region, with one of the most open economies and a liberal tax regime.
So if you’re in a position to join them do business in Bahrain, you’ll need a cost-effective, easy to use and reliable international conference call provider – and that’s where ConferenceCall.co.uk comes in…
In order to keep up with increasingly advanced technology, cyber criminals and scams are getting more and more sophisticated – so much so, that it’s unlikely any systems can ever be considered to be 100% secure.
Is artificial intelligence (AI) key to the future of cyber security?
We all want our employees to be as productive as possible, and finding the right work/life balance can be key to keeping employees happy – and happy employees are generally more productive.
The trouble is, finding the right work/life balance can be tricky – while having the option of working from home will be enough for some, remote working doesn’t agree with everyone, even though advances in mobile technology mean that working from anywhere is easier than ever before.
So, how can you improve the work/life balance of your employees?
How engaged are your employees? If your staff are kept motivated and challenged, either as part of the work itself or the culture your business is built upon, and feel valued, then there’s a good chance there will be high levels of employee engagement.
Similarly, if your product or service is something everyone believes in and can get behind, then it’s likely that engagement levels will be high and staff will work hard and pull in the same direction.
But what if employee engagement is low and staff appear to lack motivation? Here’s how to improve employee engagement.