Home Working

Contents

1. A guide to happy home working
2. The right homeworking insurance
3. Home truths

Home truths

So, once your insurance is sorted, what's working from home actually like? Gillian Nissim knows a thing or two about its pros and cons: she founded Workingmums.co.uk to connect parents and carers needing flexible employment with companies that can offer it. Since its start in 2006, the company has grown to eight employees – all of them working mums and all, including Gillian, working from home.

"It works in terms of us getting the quality of people who understand what we're doing," she says. "But when everybody's working from home it does have other challenges: you have to be really organised."

Gillian says that, as a mother, running a business from home lets her feel more present in her family’s life. "I just wouldn't be around as much if I was having to commute into town and work 9-5. It really reduces the pressure in the mornings of getting the kids to school and nursery, or finding someone to take them."

Gillian offers the following advice for anyone planning to move to working from home:

• Technology plays a big part in keeping business running smoothly. "The technology these days is amazing: we're on Instant Messenger so we're always in touch during the day, and we use voice-over-internet phones."
• It's really, really important that you've got your childcare sorted even if you are working from home. "You can't work while your child's asleep or playing in the next room: it just doesn't work!"
• But working from home does give you more flexibility with childcare. "You might be able to have somebody in the house looking after the kids, which might cost less than paying for a full-time nursery place."

To ensure you are covered in case things don't go to plan, consider taking out home-based professional insurance with MORE TH>N BUSINESS.

Public liability insurance
Professional indemnity insurance
Employers' liability insurance
Workingmums.co.uk
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