A question I get sometimes from those who just can’t see themselves working from home is “Who Works from Home?” The answer: More and more people in more and more professions. Let’s look at some of the examples.
Self-employed
Self-employed professionals are great candidates for working in a home office. Writers and editors, developers and designers, translators, computer programmers, teachers, tech support specialists, franchise owners, transcriptionists, virtual assistants, and any number of types of business owners and crafts people. The internet is full of many kinds of jobs for the self-employed. The overhead associated with an office can be prohibitive for those just starting a business. Working out of a home office helps tremendously with the expenses.
Telecommuters and Virtual Employees
Telecommuters are defined as those who work for a company, but do the commuting electronically through teleconferencing, file sharing, and remote access to their company’s resources. Virtual Employees are workers such as contractors and long-term freelancers. Forbes, in a 2014 article suggested that the percentage of telecommuters is from 30 to 45 percent. The trend has been established and it doesn’t look like it is going away soon. The reasons? Business’s needs for working around the clock, for hiring hard-to-find skill sets, for wanting to offer employees a work-life balance and flexibility, for participating in a global workforce, and for expanding their workforce pool.
Professionals Taking the Work-at-Home Dive
Many people are just fed up with work and are considering taking the dive to finding a home-based business. Warning: There are lots of get-rich-quick scams out there! Maybe 1 out of every 50-60 publicized work-at-home opportunities really pan out to true paying work. With that said, there are many ways to make money out of your home office. If you are jumping ship from your day job, be careful. If it is too good to be true, but probably is a scam – and work takes just that – work, at least to get started.
Retired, But Not Really
Retirement sounds great when you are in the middle of the 8-6 job with a bad boss, a long commute, a glass ceiling, and high stress; however, many people get their gold watch, retire, go on a vacation in the RV, and then find themselves wondering what to do with themselves. I think there is a coffee cup purchased by a lot of spouses of retired professionals that says: “How can I miss you if you never go away?” Many retired professionals go back to work and are desperately needed by the still struggling workforce. Retired professionals not only often become successful at their next career, but serve the rest of us as consultants, teachers, mentors, board members, etc. And the cool thing, they can often easily work out of their home office.
Part-termers and Moonlighters
Even working professionals often find themselves in other endeavors – part-time teachers, writers, developers-on-the-side, and hobbyists. Even part-time workers need effective offices and excellent work-at-home practices and habits.
Movers and Travelers
There is also a unique subset of workers who move around a lot. Those awesome spouses of active military, spouses of transient professionals, such as those who work as long-term consultants around the globe, all can benefit from working at home. There is also a great group of folks who travel for a living – journalists, writers, consultants, salespeople, RVers, travel bloggers, or people who work on vacation. There are special skill sets that can apply to the highly mobile professional.
The work-at-home trend is expanding each year. Think about the terms we use to describe them: eworkers, webworkers, iworkers, teleworkers, telecommuters, remote workers, mobile professionals, digital nomads, location-independent professionals, technomads, virtual workers, etc.
What do you think?
So if you are a work-at-homer, how do you describe yourself? Do you use a term that connects with bosses, clients, potential customers? Let us know what you have found that works and doesn’t work.