16 May 2010

The Home Worker Award Gives Karen Wings To Travel

Last year Karen Reyburn, from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire, was announced as the winner of The Home Worker Award and with this week’s announcement that the 2010 Remote Worker Awards, in association with BT Business, is now open, Karen encourages everyone who wants to work from home to enter.Karen's boss gave her a trip to Auss after she won The Home Worker Award

Karen manages the European division of global organisation RAN ONE Europe entirely from home. Her motivation for entering this award was to let others see that life doesn’t have to revolve around a job location. 

As a result of winning this Award, Karen’s employer gave her the opportunity to travel a bit further afield, spending six weeks in Bali and Australia!

Karen said: “Winning this award has been a great reminder of the benefits of home working – to me, my employer, and the many others who have wondered just whether it’s possible to work profitably from home. As a result I had the privilege of spending three weeks in Bali and three weeks in Australia, meeting colleagues and distributors for our business whom I had previously only met virtually!”

Karen’s employer has always supported this option, and recent events reinforced their belief that it is the way to go. Whilst in Australia Karen was delayed for a week due to Iceland’s volcano, and thanks to their home working plan she lost absolutely no time. It didn’t even inconvenience the company, and she was able to work from Sydney in just the same way as she works from her home office in Scotland.


Karen meets global colleagues Karen believes that this is the beauty of flexible working – when things change in the environment, work doesn’t have to come to a standstill. She encourages anyone who is self-motivated and who hates traffic jams (or travel delays) to consider the option of working from home at least part time, if not full time and therefore enter The Remote Worker Awards.

Award winning website, Remote Employment, Google’s No 1 job site for flexible and home based jobs, launched The Remote Worker Awards in association with BT Business to highlight how home working and remote working benefits the British public and their working life.

Entries now open at www.remoteworkerawards.com.

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How to set up a home office ...

Before you set up a work station at home, check out our Seven Top Tips on how to work from home:

Your Home Office
Ideally, you will have a spare room to create a home office. If not, a corner of another room, will be fine as long as you are not constantly distracted in the family fast lane. Set up your kitSet up your computer, files and phone to give you maximum comfort for long hours. Have enough plug points for PC, printer, phone, scanner, mobile charger, fax machine and answer phone. Even better get an all in once mod con to save on a jumble of cables and wires.

Pick your desk location
You should be able to see the door of the office from where you are sitting or at least more of your surroundings. Beware of facing the garden and the bird bath – too tempting to watch the world go by! A hard chair will give you backache so spend a little extra on a good one.

Working Hours
Working outside 'normal' working hours helps to balance your work and home life so don't feel guilty dashing off to take the lads to footie after school, as long as you get your work done. Catching up in the early morning or later in the evening works well, but also watch out for going OTT. Make sure you close down and walk away at some point or the family will go hungry.

Have a breather
No matter what kind of work you do or what home you do it in, you can go bonkers if you spend 24 hours a day at it. Get out, whenever you can, to clear your head and to see other people. Use lunch time as a good break to pop down to pick up groceries for dinner, step outside to feed the birds during your coffee break or walk the dog around the block to clear the cobwebs. This is also a great way to mull over a document or get inspiration for new ideas.

Keep in Touch
Have no fear that your social life at work comes to an end if you leave your office to work from home, in fact in some cases your relationship with your colleagues may improve. Email is instant but be careful of 'funnies' – they can eat up a huge chunk of time. Chat through business issues by phone and meet for a quick bite every now and then.

Goal scoring
Give yourself little goals and objectives and then reward yourself when they are complete. Make sure family and friends know your hours or days of working at home and stick to that. Don't be tempted to pop over for a coffee or cook a large meal. Give yourself this time as a reward for getting up early on a Monday to finish a long-winded report. Or if you score well with a new client take five to put your feet up before the school run. Whatever incentives work for you, use them to motivate yourself to balance your time around your other responsibilities.

If you have any suggestions on working from home, please submit your articles to grace@remoteemployment.com.

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