Challenges of the COVID Home worker

We’ve all seen the clip of the children bursting in on their dad being interviewed live on BBC news. While not everyone is regularly giving live interviews to the world’s media from their study, many parents are currently struggling balancing the trials of constantly having a full house, home schooling and trying to get their own ‘day job’ done, whether they are self-employed or work for a company.  We love our children, but with almost 3 months of schools being closed for the majority of people, parents are beginning to love and respect teachers and the daily job they do more than ever!

BBC News interview interrupted by the kids

Of course now the giant UK experiment of home working has been going on for a number of months, the novelty is beginning to wear off a little for some and people are finding that children seeking attention is not the only distraction to working productively at home. Separating your work and life routine is important. Sure you can work in your old track bottoms from your living room, but if every 10 minutes, you are disturbed by the lure of the fridge, household chores, or rewarding yourself  with a sneaky episode on netflix, then unless you are super disciplined or are an experienced homer worker, then working from home can be a challenge.

Let’s not forget about loneliness either. It might sound counter-intuitive especially if you have a constant household full of people. However the social aspect of work and office life is so important. Sure the head down aspect of “work” where you are writing emails and reports can be done anywhere and often the quieter the better, but the collaborative and social aspect of bouncing ideas, solving problems, or simply gossiping with co-workers and colleagues is just not the same from home, even with the fantastic video conferencing software such as ZOOM  now available to everyone.

The other key issue is of course wifi. Possibly the single most important invention since the wheel and causes panic across all members of a household if not working at lightning speed 24 hours a day to feed the insatiable appetites of the seemingly hundreds of smartphone or tablet devices…. So on the work front if your important video conference is to be slowed down by hungry household wifi rivals, or even worse by Virgin media’s (or others) inopportune bout of regional maintenance works, then you could have a problem..

What work from home problems have we missed?

Another option – work at your local coworking hub

Working remotely does not necessarily mean working from home either, which doesn’t suit everyone. With local coworking spaces now largely reopened, people could potentially work “closer to home”  where the  new normal could mean working at your nearest coworking facility instead of, or as well as working from home. This could be a  temporary solution for people whose main corporate office elsewhere remains closed, or it could become a new way of working where working at a local satellite office becomes the normal and you only head to that large central office in London (or elsewhere) when you really really need to. (Think of the time, money, the health benefits and your sanity saved from unnecessary commuting)

Coworking hubs usually come with dedicated private and open work spaces, high speed wifi, real life like-minded people to engage with and super flexible cost-effective PAYG or membership packages…… They mean you can get out of the house, seperate your work and life and of course comes with no little home disturbances.

MyWorkSpot Maidenhead – 2 day free pass offer

We are a flexible office and coworking hub based in Maidenhead Berkshire offering full-time, part-time and PAYG desk and private office memberships, meeting rooms and event space. We recently launched the option to book a private office by the day.

As well as local businesses based  full-time or part-time,  we have many corporate commuters who commute to London from Maidenhead, but live locally and come to MWS to work or have meetings as part of their weekly routine. We also act as a satellite office for some company teams whose head office is elsewhere, but want a regular base to work and meet close to home. Post COVID-19 we can also help with temporary desk or office solutions for individuals or teams. If you have more than one team member, or want to find out about solutions for corporate teams – read here how we can help

If you live in or close to Maidenhead, come and check us out. For those NEW to MWS, we are giving away two free day passes to come and try out what we think is a better way of working.

Next Steps

• Click here to take a virtual tour
• Click here to read our revised Health and Safety policy – (we are actively monitoring and adhering to the latest UK Government guidelines on returning to work, please get in touch with us by info@myworkspotuk.com or 01628 613200 if you would like to discuss
• Click here to find out more about our membership options, book a tour, or download the MWS app and get access to 2 free days immediately.