What do you miss most from the office when working from home?

I posed this question to a few of my colleagues, friends, and people on Twitter, when trying to work out what was standing in the way of employees taking up flexible working.

Aside from one ‘nothing, what’s better than working in bed’ response, most were quick to give at least one thing they would miss from the office. I decided to take a few of the popular responses, and work out how you can still make use of these with Anywhere Working.

Most of the responses filter down into one of two categories: human interaction and technology.

Human interaction

Includes: colleagues around you, conversations at the watercooler, bouncing ideas off one another, people to talk to on breaks, et cetera.

Technology is your friend.

Along with the obvious answers such as Office Communicator or your messaging service client for bouncing those ideas around and that quick bit of office gossip, social media is a great saviour for this issue.

Twitter is your office watercooler, your networking event and your radio all in one. Having a dedicated Twitter client such as Tweetdeck open in the background is a useful way of connecting and interacting with other humans throughout the day. Plus, unlike the real office: when you need to get something done without interruption; you can turn your virtual office off for an hour. Perfect.

Technology

Includes: printers, professional software, intranet access, and even email archives.

IT is your friend. The outside world is your friend.

Many of the technology problems that have cropped up should be solvable by your IT department by allowing better remote access, personal laptops or more software licenses.

As for hardware problems, take this as an opportunity to extend flexible working beyond the possibility of simply ‘working from home.’ A lot of hardware, such as printers, will be available in public spaces along with Wi-Fi, so take this opportunity to combat the social problems of flexible working and the technology problems all at once.

Summary

I realise that some jobs simply will not allow for flexible working, but many of the people I asked presented problems with fixes that are easy to implement and easy to get used to.

What’s stopping you from embarking on flexible working? Let me know and I’ll help find solutions to your queries.