Setting up a home office can save your company money and give employees a new lease of life.

Flexible or mobile working offers businesses huge advantages – the chances are you’re aware of this or you wouldn’t be reading this blog in the first place. People are starting to make mistakes, though, some of which start off with the assumption that if someone is working off site in their home office or their mobile office then the working environment is effectively someone else’s problem.

It isn’t. If an employee has an accident or a working issue of some description it’s as much down to the employer as if they were sitting in the office – arguably the risk has increased because the employer no longer has control over the working environment. The idea of this article is to get you as a manager thinking about some of the issues that could affect your colleagues and possibly backfire on you.

Setting up a home office: ergonomics

We’ll come to the technology in a moment but the first thing to ask an employee is whether they’re sitting comfortably. The desk set-up they use for your business is part of your office set-up whether it’s in their home or not. For very occasional use the laptop at the kitchen table is probably going to be OK, but for anything more than ‘occasional’ you may have to look at persuading the employee to invest in a decent chair and a proper desk.

The standard advice on what people should have is pretty much as follows:

Adequate light (ergonomic guides are full of wooly terms like ‘adequate’).

Adjustable chair that supports the back.

Keyboard accessible without bending the elbows too much (for ‘too much’ see the note on ‘adequate light’ above).

Eyes level with the top of the computer screen so the neck doesn’t get stiff from looking down.

Screen breaks every 45 minutes (nobody remembers this).

Ideally a bowl of water at the desk to keep the atmosphere from drying up – people at computers don’t blink as much as they should (says the writer who has just been prescribed drops due to drying eyes for precisely this reason).

Much of this stuff is common sense. When it comes to ergonomics, do encourage people to look at their cabling and how this is managed. A desk with a computer, powered speakers, a desk lamp, landline phone, network router, independently powered backup disk, uninterruptable power supply, printer and a charger for a USB dock means you’ll have ten plugs to accommodate, plus a phone cable. You can start to cut back by getting rid of the speakers and getting a mobile that attaches to the USB port but you get the idea – it can be messy down there.

Setting up a home office: money

Of course the idea of a home office is to save money. A company can expand employees without having to buy into larger premises, which is already a bit of a boost.

But there are other financial considerations. Few employees will insist on an employer contributing to their electricity and as long as they’re on unmetered internet (which most people are) they’ll be OK with using their own connection. If you offer some sort of recompense they’ll think more of you and you’ll be ahead of the competition.

There’s also the issue of whose laptop they use. Many companies are adjusting to the idea of people using their own technology, which is great as long as you’re confident in your own security. If their computer is the same one their kids use for playing World of Warcraft or whatever, it’s got to be secured against accidental erasure of data and any other damage that might happen.

It’s also worth getting some employees – realistically the over-forties – to check their mortgage or rental agreement, plus their household insurance. Those contracts set before home working became prevalent tend to specify that the insured/mortgaged/whatever must not conduct a business from their home. More modern agreements allow for business use of premises as long as nobody’s going to hold stock or receive frequent visitors, which alters the security risk of a building.

This is nothing to worry about and a simple phone call will usually clear up any worries – insurance and mortgage companies are well aware of the occasional need to work from home. But you don’t want to let them off the hook if there’s ever a query – insurers are notorious for finding wriggle room when you’d have sworn there wasn’t any, keep them posted so they can’t dispute a claim later!

Setting up a home office: technology

In urban areas and indeed the vast majority of rural UK you can assume people will have access to broadband. The problem for businesses is that this is rarely going to be business-grade broadband.

This may not matter. If the requirement is for occasional emails and uploads/downloads of files then anyone who wants, say, to watch BBC iPlayer will already have ample internet. If it’s for a constant connection into an intranet, though, if it’s a matter of editing video online, then you will need to be confident that the connection is robust. If people don’t come into the office often then you’re probably going to want video conferencing as well to keep them motivated, and this has to be reliable.

This is where it is worth considering some of the offerings from companies like Vodafone, that will provide not only a robust connection to the internet (and through a VPN to your own business) but also dedicated account management and prioritisation for a business account in the unlikely event that there’s a problem.

None of this should put anybody off. There’s a lot of benefit to be had from allowing people to work from home – they can be more productive, women can work longer into pregnancy (and they often want to), and there’s no time or energy spent on the commute.

It’s just not what so many people think it is – a blanket ‘He’s working from home, it’s all his problem’ – and that’s where the model starts to fall down. As long as it’s clearly understood that this isn’t some sort of easy business panacea, and as long as the underlying work goes in, it’s a terrific way to save money while growing your business.

Guy Clapperton

Remote working with One Net Express

If you run a small business you will know that one of the biggest challenges you face is keeping in touch with existing and potential customers. A lot of small businesses and startups don’t have funds for ‘back office’ admin and support services. Here we look at ways to keep the business rolling by remote working. Read More: One Net Express