For years I’ve advocated working from home and shared several reasons for leaving the corporate world behind including no commute, flexible hours, and the lack of a boss looming over your shoulder. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) however has an even more compelling reason to work naked: the swine flu. At last count there are 40 confirmed cases in the U.S., making working from home less of a luxury and more of a necessity. Reuters reported that an employee at Ernst & Young was diagnosed with the disease and staff members were given the option of working from home. For a detailed description of the disease and how to prevent it, check out an article in USA Today.
Those of us already working naked won’t have to make any work adjustments because of the flu, but for those who commute to work every day and aren’t used to working alongside family members or the kitchen, working from home can be a big adjustment. There are a few ways to make a temporary work from home situation work:
- Designate a specific place for your home office. Don’t locate your home office in a high-traffic area. The kitchen, family room or any other space that attracts your family on a regular basis isn’t ideal for working from home.
- Use a laptop or a desktop with plenty or memory and storage capacity. If you can transfer data between your home office and work computer, you’ll save time and reduce the risk of losing valuable information. If not, keep backups of all your data so you can transfer the information to your desktop at your office.
- Make sure you have a high-speed Internet connection. If your kids like to play online games, they may slow down your connection so you’ll need to work out some type of schedule. A little hint: work trumps computer games every time.
- If your office can’t forward calls to you, consider leaving your cell phone number on your voice mail message. Otherwise, plan on checking your voice mail several times each hour.
