Many people would love the idea of working from home, and it’s easy to see why.
Skipping the morning and evening commute is one. Flexibility is another. for parents with kids yet to start school, the idea of working in one part of the home while your kids are being taken care of in another is a dream come true.
However, remote working offers freedoms that if you are not disciplined enough, work will suffer significantly. Creating an office space in your home is among the best things you can do for your productivity.
Here are five reasons why.
1. For Privacy
Working from home needs not hinder other members of the households from regular activities. These include hosting.
However, it becomes a challenge to make or have business calls with guests listening in. For this reason, a separate office space ensures you have a place you can engage in work and work-related conversations freely.
Similarly, noisy background with children playing and wailing in the background will communicate unprofessionalism to your boss or customers. An office eliminates this issue.
This extends to documents, as a home office will have a lockable door to keep sensitive documents away from third parties.
2. It Can Be Used For Study As Well
Office space can be a multi-purpose space that can be used as a study room as well. With technology and online classes, advancing one’s education has become much more manageable.
If you do your best work in a quiet, secluded place, this would be ideal. Your home office is the perfect spot to study as it separates you from distractions and other activities going on within the home.
This tranquillity supports the effective study. Go to this link for additional study help.
3. A Telephone line
One of the most practical reasons for having a home office is when a fixed office line is necessary. This means work calls to come right to your office.
You might wonder why this is necessary for the era of mobile phones.
Well, if you will also require a fax machine for your work operations, this telephone line is required. Your communication channels must reflect what clients are most comfortable with.
If you have some that prefer fax over email, adding a fax machine becomes one way to keep them.
4. Tax Purposes
If you are running a business, filing and paying taxes is a legal requirement.
To make deductions for work expenses, you must be able to prove that you have a functional office at your home address. One way to do this is by having a full-fledged home office.
If an auditor ever wants to audit you, one of the things they will be looking to see is the actual office.
It, therefore, helps to have this separate office within your house if you are to engage in business from home and want to do your taxes the correct way.
5. It Supports a Work-Life Balance
When you work in the same space as your family, you might end up working 20 hour days without noticing it.
The assumption is that you have spent actual time with them because you can see and hear the family. This is a fallacy.
A healthy work-life balance comes from having set hours for work, after which you can get on with life. A home office provides a separate area where you can go, shut the door, and work. You can then join the family after your set work hours and, ideally, leave work at the office.
This is healthy for everyone involved, yourself included.