How to Run Your Business From Home
Operating your business from home:
Learning how to work from home and manage your business remotely is becoming increasingly important, especially in 2020. It may or may not be a good fit for your business. All my businesses are completely remote. My employees all work out of their homes and it works out great but we have taken great care to make sure the situation works for everyone involved and still, there are pros and cons to this working from home environment. Let’s talk about some of the pros and cons of turning your business into a remote office, where you and your employees work from home. Both the pros and cons of this can be significant, so you want to make sure whatever you do works for your situation:
Pros:
- Reduced expenses like rent and utilities.
o This may be the first thing you THOUGHT of. Reducing your office rent expense can be a significant cost saver.
- More desirable for your employees
o Working from home is usually a huge benefit for someone looking for a job. People will often sacrifice pay or hours to work from home. It’s convenient, it affects their familial and childcare situations in a positive way and most people like to be home.
Cons:
- Distractions
o This is probably the most significant issue. People have a hard time putting on their business hat at home and staying away from distractions like kids, pets, cleaning and even watching tv or taking naps. If you or your employees are going to be working from home, you need to address this by setting work expectations or deadlines, etc. You may need to shift to a results oriented approach to job tasks. Keep in mind though as you consider at home distractions that there are also distractions at the office. Maybe as many distractions with chatty CO WORKERS and social media.
- Another con is Trust
o If you let your employees work from home, then you really need to limit people you hire to people that you trust. It becomes an important factor. There are more pros and cons that will be specific to your business. Some businesses may be benefitted by a conference room to hold meetings. Some won’t. Some businesses have a STOREFRONT for customers. Examine all the pros and cons of making this switch for your situation. If you decide to do it, here are some things you are going to need to implement:
Cloud and remote operations:
- If people are working from home, they will need access to all the company files that allows them to operation as efficiently from their house. With my companies, everything we do is on the cloud. If we get any contracts in the mail, they are immediately scanned and put into folders. We use a CRM (hubspot in our case, but there are lots of them) and our emails and folders and everything syncs up to the CRM. We even have an electronic signature software that works with our CRM and use Quickbooks online. We have no need for papers. Many offices require people to work at an office location but offer the flexibility of working from home. This video is being made in 2020 when the COVID19 pandemic is everywhere so many offices are having to do this. Regardless of how you operate, going away from paper documents and toward cloud computing is really the direction everything is going so you should probably look into making that shift Regular meetings and calls.
- As your office shifts to remote operations, consistent communication becomes very important. That is usually manifest in weekly zoom meetings or telephone calls. Even if you feel like you don’t need to, doing a short weekly zoom meeting keeps people accountable for what is going on. It makes it more obvious if someone is taking advantage of the distractions at home. It is essential to keep people accountable for their work in a remote setting. Have an office manager or someone take notes in the meeting, particularly things that should be done that week to be followed up on next week or at your next meeting Remote phone and email systems.
- Working from home presents a challenge in that when people call the office, they won’t be able to get ahold of your employees without calling their respective cell phones. There are software programs available that can assist with this. We use a software called Grasshopper. It is a remote phone system that forwards calls to each staff member based on the automated prompt or extension that is dialed. Our customers have no idea that they are calling people at their homes. We can even transfer people and it will forward to their cell phones. Email is easy. You just need to make sure you have the look and appearance of an office staff working together Client meeting solutions.
- Meeting with clients in your home is usually very unprofessional, so if this is a big part of your business, you will need to address this issue. There are several shared conference room and office services that allow a co-op of businesses to schedule and use conference rooms when needed. We don’t use this with my businesses very much as I actually do have a small office with a BOARDROOM that rarely gets used. We usually meet with clients at coffee shops or venues. Just depends on your business. Whatever processes you put in place for your navigation to a remote office environment, take some time to think about how to keep the professionalism and office culture that you want in your business. It may require more office get togethers to keep people enjoying office comradery that comes with meeting at a physical location each day. With my businesses, we try to compensate for this deficiency by having regular get togethers and excuses to keep friendships and communication strong through our company. Thanks for watching and good luck in these efforts to use technology to turn your business into a remote office.
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