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An Introduction to Working from Home
Ask anyone to choose their perfect job and home working would come high on their wish list. Whether home working is an option provided by your employer or a decision you have taken yourself in starting your own business, the thought of just getting out of bed, walk over to a workstation and just start work is very appealing. No commuting to and from the office and working hours to suit yourself.
But is home or flexible working right for you as an individual, or good for your business as an employer? Well there are many advantages and disadvantages. Home or flexible working brings new responsibilities for both the employer and employee. Equally with advances in mobile technology it has never been easier to set up your own business to work from home.
An Increasing Trend
From a business point of view, allowing staff to work at home on either a full or part-time basis can bring a range of business benefits, from increased productivity, greater staff motivation to effective use of your premises. Advancements in mobile technology has contributed enormously to the increase in opportunities for home working.
The spread of home working using the internet or telephone opens up a new range of possibilities with regards to the way a business works and structures itself. Computers, mobile phones, broadband and mobile broadband all play a role. For the individual, becoming self employed and working from home has also never been easier. If you have a laptop and mobile phone the opportunity is there, it’s just deciding what you want to do. So home working is becoming a way of life for many individuals and businesses, but what is home working?
Some employers will offer selected employees the opportunity to become a teleworker, whereby an employee can undertake their role from home utilising various types of technology, which is installed at the employees home by the employer. The employee will remain in touch with the business and other teleworkers. Some businesses, for example the utility companies who require gas, electric and meter readers, will class employees undertaking this type of work as teleworkers or outworkers.
Some individuals opt for the self-employed work life. The self-employed will operate their business from home, offering a product or service such as web development or business consultancy from home. In these types of roles, the individual can often plan their day to suit their own needs. I know one web developer who often works well into the early hours of the morning as this is when he feels most productive.
Others such as a painter and decorator, plumber or gardener, whilst providing their services away from the home, use home as the office for paperwork such as pricing future jobs and preparing invoices. I know of several painters and decorators who work Monday to Thursday, but use Friday’s to go out and price up future potential work. That is one thing to bear in mind when setting up as self employed, you need to allow time to find or prospect for future work.
Some types of work are more suitable for flexible working than others, the following list is not exhaustive, but will give some guidance:
Many of the above have a common theme and that is that as long as you have access to a computer and a phone, you can undertake almost all of these tasks from home.
The shift towards home working does not mean employees only work from home. Splitting time between the workplace and home is the most productive solution, as you want employees to attend meetings, therefore keeping them informed and involved. Continued face to face interaction within the business remains a key requirement.
With the introduction of home working regulations, employers now have to seriously consider employee requests to work flexibly from home, especially if they have parental responsibility for children under 16 years old, disabled children or they are carers for other adults with disabilities.
Employers and individuals also need to consider what equipment will be required to ensure that an efficient business operation and working environment is set up.
The increase in home working has required that manufacturers develop a wider range in office furniture to fit in with varying home decoration styles.
The Pros and Cons
So what are the advantages and disadvantages of an employer allowing employees to work from home or use their home as a base for at least part of the working week? It’s clear there are a number of benefits to the employer:
One thing I particularly miss is the Monday morning office banter about what you did at the weekend of how your football team has fared compared to others. Often the camaraderie that is unique to an office where you get to know people well over many years is also lost where home working becomes an option.
Are You Suited o Home Working?
Having identified the types of work that is suitable for home working, the employer must satisfy themselves that employees are suited to this type of work. It’s likely they will need a number of skills in key areas to allow them to work away from base.
We must make it clear that flexible working is not suitable for everyone and care should be taken, because allowing one person to work from home will set a precedent that others will want to follow. Others will see an attraction to working at home particularly on a lovely summer’s day, rather than being stuck in an office. I must confess that as I write this article, I am sitting in our summer house at the bottom of the garden with the laptop on a glorious summer’s day in June.
An employer you must have a clear idea of how home/flexible working could fit in with the needs of the business. A set of house rules need to be established and maintained, i.e. priority is given to requests from parents of young or disabled children. My wife for example, plans her day around the hours of taking the children to school and collecting them later. She maintains that she is extremely focused on what she needs to achieve within those six hours in between. No distractions or idle chit-chat that will occur in an office environment.
In some cases the employer is legally obliged to seriously consider requests for home/flexible workers. Employee with parental responsibility for children aged 16 or under, or disabled children who are under 18 and receive disability living allowances can request a range of flexible working patterns from their employers, this includes the right to work from home. There are similar rights for employees who are carers of adults.
The introduction of home working can also lead to an changes to employee contract terms and conditions. In a majority of cases an employee’s place of work is listed in the written schedules of their employment contract. It’s important that when an employee starts to work from home it may be necessary to review and amend their employment contract.
The following is a list of contractual aspects an employer should consider when implementing a home/flexible work policy:
Allowing flexible working the employer should remember that they still have health and safety responsibilities for people who work at or from home; and you are likely to have to provide and maintain equipment for employees to use, these include:
For added luxury, executive leather desk chairs are available for the home or office working environment.
IT equipment and software can be expensive so it’s important to ensure it meets your genuine business need and is compatible with your existing systems. Technology changes almost daily and with today’s advances the establishment of virtual teams where employees work together despite working at home can be set up easily and at reasonable expense. These teams could be two employees talking over the phone or you could use more hi-tech solutions like high speed internet, instant messaging, webinar and video conferencing.
Providing all this kit and equipment it is important to ensure your business insurance cover is extended to cover home workers, as their home insurance is unlikely to cover this, however they should check with their insurer and extend their policy to include working from home.It is also a good idea to find out who would be responsible for a claim should you have an accident at home, during working hours.
Workers who adopt home working should check with their local council and mortgage company the position regarding using their home as a work base, and whether they may have to pay business rates for the portion of their home they use as an office. Some self employed businesses will involve use of a vehicle which will need to be parked up at certain times of the day. For example painters and decorators and builders are likely to utilise a transit van or pick up truck in the work. You should therefore ensure that neighbours will not be offended by having the vehicle parked in the street or to block light out of their homes. If you are to park a vehicle at home, let the neighbours know, it may save a lot of hassle later.
The employer needs to ensure that employees take care of business equipment and information in their possession, it’s important to establish procedures to be followed if any item is damaged or lost, especially data and intellectual rights.
We all agree that home working offers a wide range of benefits to both the business and employees, but it needs to be carefully managed to be successful. Procedures should be put in place for managers to monitor and assess home workers, this is the most significant managerial challenge an employer will face. It can be helpful to measure their effectiveness in terms of output rather than the hours of work. Agree set goals and deadlines for particular projects, and ensure these are being met, give feedback promptly and sensitively if things go wrong.
Ensuring home workers have access to training can prepare and help employees develop the necessary skills they need.For staff who work alone a sense of isolation is one of the main factors most likely to make home working fail, therefore it’s important to ensure procedures are put into place to make people feel part of the team, these should include:
When the employees job is entirely home-based from the start, make sure their induction is undertaken at your premises, this helps the home worker focus and be productive if they have a chance to establish a clear idea of the people they will be working for.
I found that shopping online is where you will find the best buy office chair deals, often with furniture to match.
A Brief Health & Safety Obligations Check List for Home Workers
If you use your home as your main business workplace, you must carry out a health and safety risk assessment to identify any possible hazards to yourself, workers, visitors and other members of your household.
Possible hazards include:
Slips, trips and falls are one of the most common causes of injury in the work place. Even something we take for granted on a daily basis, such as walking up and down the stairs, should be regarded as a hazard. Evaluate whether a hazard is significant and if it is, whether you have taken enough precautions to make the risk as low as you reasonably can.
You need to consider:
Five steps to a health and safety risk assessment
Conclusion
With advancements in mobile technology, working at home has become far easier to do. It can offer a very balanced way of life and the rewards can be great. In the current economic climate, many who have been unfortunate to suffer redundancy or reduced hours are considering setting up their own business to work from home. Having worked in the corporate world for over twenty years and just suffered redundancy, it is certainly something to consider.
But working at home needs to be considered carefully. Is it right for you? Is it right for your employer? What impact will it have on my homelife? Many advantages, but also many disadvantages and bear in mind the health and safety requirements and risks. Your health is important so choosing the correct office furniture to meet your needs is a must for any home worker to ensure you have the proper facilities for home working.
Another thing to consider, which is often overlooked, is that once you have got your work into your home, how do you get away from it?
If you are lucky enough to really love your work the temptation can be to do it all day long. Eventually this can lead to burn out and can also take away some of the pleasure of working, even if it is something you really love. Therefore it is important to have balance in your life, even more so when you work from home. Some suggestions to help to achieve this are to make sure that when you have lunch, for example, remove yourself from the work space and don’t eat at your desk, get some separation from the work when you are not doing it.
Remember that just because you work from home it doesn’t mean that work has to take over your life completely.
Playing and learning are so closely related that they often can’t be distinguished at all. In one way or another, most games are educational – even if it were only in educating the player up to a higher level of competition. That’s fairly often overlooked, I believe… but it’s true: even your very own recreational game of tennis, on a sweet summer afternoon with a frefreshing drink witin hands reach, is an educational game!
But let’s be realistic: when talking about educational games, more often than not we refer to learning systems for our children. Especially in the last decade or two, an enormous number of educational “tools” have been developed for children of all ages, and even for grown-ups. The latter may or may not be intentional, but a fact is that many of the more intricate educational or learning systems, like those dealing with science and nature, are enthusiasticaly used by the parents of the children for whom the gift was originaly intended!
This will not so soon happen with educational toys for very young children, like alphabet blocks or ABC blocks. And then there’s the enormous range of educational games/toys for all ages in-between! Looking back on my own youth in the 1940′s and 1950′s I am very much amazed by all the educational tools that are available now! On the other hand I believe that our childrens own creative development suffers from those pre-chewed and bite-sized chunks. I used to be very excited with the almost proverbial cigar box from my granddad, out of which I created houses, factories and garages – the box that is, not my granddad.
So it all boils down to relativity, I think. Some values are lost, others are gained. But at least, to the considerable relief of sometimes desperate parents, buying educational games and toys has become easier than it was ever before. Generally speaking, this is an improvement.
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Since they were established, Header Die & Tool has grown from a supplier for a local fastener manufacturer into a global supplier of cold forming tooling and other specialty manufactured parts. Staffed with employees that together have over 300 years of experience in cold forming tooling, they deliver excellent work on every job.
Header Die & Tool specializes in a wide variety of cold/hot forming tooling. Specialized header dies include both steel and carbide dies, punches and inserts. Header tooling includes both TORX and TORX Plus tooling, and Taptite and Taptite 2000 tooling. They also have machining capabilities including, but not limited to, EDM, milling, and CNC turning.
Header Die & Tool also has a managed inventory system where they will hold tooling until they are told by the customer that it can be released. At Header Die & Tool, quality is of the utmost importance. Attention to detail through in-process inspection and final inspection requirements yield tools built to customer specified requirements. As a result, these tools are able to be delivered in an on-time manner.
They believe continuous improvement is an integral process. Through the utilization of the best possible employees and equipment, they ensure that the customer has a quality experience from start to finish. Header Die & Tool Inc. looks forward to providing customers with their services for many years to come and earning the right to be considered the supplier of choice.
As your child gets ready to go out in the world, maybe for the first time when you send her off to kindergarten, one of the top concerns any worried mom or dad has will be about security. And while most schools are run by qualified education professionals and campuses are secured, it might give you a greater sense of security if you were able to “arm” your child with a cell phone “just in case.”
Of course that desire to let your little boy or girl carry his or her own cell phone to kindergarten may be more related to moms insecurity about being out of touch with the child for several hours. If you know she has a phone on her and knows how to use it, at least you know she can reach you if she needs to hear your voice and that you can reach her if you need to know your baby is doing ok especially in those first days and weeks at kindergarten.
Giving your child a cell phone to carry in his back pack or her purse may seem like a simple and harmless little step that will give the child and mom and dad some sense of connection and security during the day. After all, who would even know that it’s there? It’s a tiny device that wouldn’t bother anyone. But if your baby needed to call home during recess, it would be there. Not only that, if there was an emergency where you needed to reach your family, you want them instantly accessible and a cell phone makes that possible.
But there are some reasons to think this decision through in a little more depth. If you have not equipped your five year old with a cell phone so far, it will be a toy and something new to figure out if you give it to her and pack her off to school. Children are fascinated by technology and the odds that your little one will have that cell phone out during the day, playing with it and possibly distracting the other children with it are pretty good.
But even if your child is used to carrying a cell phone, you should check the rules at the school before giving your kindergartener one before sending her off to school. Many schools have rules about the children bringing any form of electronic device into the classroom. This is so the teacher doesn’t have to fight a battle with kids who would rather fool with electronic toys than pay attention. So if that is a rule that is you’re your child’s kindergarten class, you don’t want to create a situation where she could get in trouble.
There is a rule we teach our kids not to take anything into a public place that they would hate to lose. And a cell phone would be a device that would be very attractive for other kids to want to play with, to “borrow” for an hour for the day or for the week or to out and out steal so they can have their own phone. And if that happens, your child will be devastated and outraged and it will become a major incident for you, the child and the school to deal with that really never had to happen.
Realistically, no kindergartener needs a cell phone at school. If your child had one and it was unusual, she would appear to the other children like a spoiled child and possibly be isolated because of jealousy or resentment in the other kids. There are other ways to help your child get over that sense of separation and isolation from you. In fact, the one thing you want from this first year at kindergarten is for your child to start the path toward independence. Giving her a cell phone only slows that process.
So while it is a huge temptation to give your child this simple and inexpensive device, for the most part it is probably a temptation worth resisting. By having her leave it home, you prevent a lot of problems that could happen. And you teach your child self reliance. And that is one of many great lessons you want your kiddo to learn at kindergarten.
The most common form of tax rebate is the income tax refund. At the end of the year, after deductions have been calculated, a substantial number of people discover their income tax return states that they owe less money than they have already paid to the federal government in income tax withholding. This is usually because income tax withholding never takes a person’s deductions into account, as those are personal and highly variable. Instead, they are calculated on a simple formula of total income and deductions for household concerns. The resulting positive balance is refunded to the taxpayer.
In 2001, a tax rebate was given to U.S. citizens as part of an economic stimulus package: $300 for single people; $500 for single parents; $600 for married couples. One had to be an eligible taxpayer to receive a rebate, so some citizens who did not pay taxes in 2000 did not receive any payment. As the federal government was running a budget surplus at the time, this tax rebate was paid for largely out of the surplus. It was, therefore, a tax rebate above and beyond the traditional income tax refund.
Another rebate was issued to U.S. taxpayers in 2008. This rebate was $300 for singles, $600 for married couples and $300-plus per dependent child, up to a limit of $1,200. As with the 2001 rebate, this rebate was made only to eligible taxpayers. As the federal government was running a budget deficit in 2007 and 2008, however, this was a “false” rebate, as there was no surplus of tax money to be refunded. Rather than giving the excess taxes to the people, the government was instead borrowing more money to make stimulus payments.