Organizing your home office is very important to having a stress free transition to work at home. Telecommuters who decide to work from home must have all the tools required to perform the job and be successful. I have posted the most important home office items below. These things will make your work-at-home life a lot easier and more efficient.
Second Phone Line
One of the most important factors to working at home is the ability to communicate with your employer, co-workers and customers. A second phone line allows you to keep your main telephone free for family, friends and emergencies while having another line solely dedicated to your job. Easy and fast communication is key for a functioning home office.
DSL and Internet Connection
Having a fast and reliable Internet connection is a must to work at home. Most of the job is done over the Internet and having a fast connection such as a DSL or cable modem allows telecommuters to get the job completed faster and on time. A reliable e-mail connection is also preferred because most of the communication is done via e-mail.
All-in-One Printer
An all-in-one printer should include a printer, a scanner and a copier and sometimes a fax. A fax is not required if you have a scanner. Although most correspondence is sent via e-mail and the Internet, you may need to print out information for a hard copy and scan documents required for the job.
Laptop
Although a desktop computer will get the job done,I recommend getting a laptop so you can be in more than one place all day to do your job. Some employers will require telecommuters to visit the office at least once or twice a month and you want to be able to bring all your work with you to the office for easy access.
Word Processing Software
MS Word is the most popular text editing software package on computers today. Most computers come with NotePad, WordPad or MS Works, however the most popular is MS Word or OpenOffice because it includes all the applications necessary to for a job. Most employers use MS Word to edit and save documents and being to open the documents in the same format for editing will make it easier for the recipients. Companies prefer documents saved in MS Word (.doc) or Adobe (.pdf) for text documents, MS Excel (.xls) for spreadsheets and MS Powerpoint for presentations. For accounting positions, Quickbooks or Peachtree are the most popular.
Organize your home office in such a way that you have access to all the items and information you need. Keep the your printer and phone within arm’s length. Make sure the office is in a quiet place where people do not come in and out too often. Make sure to separate your home life and work life to keep from getting overwhelmed and burnt out. If the job requires sitting for over an hour, please remember to get a comfortable chair to keep your back healthy. One last thing that is very important for a home office is post-it notes. It may seem insignificant, but they are lifesavers.