Telecommuting? How to keep your benefits working from home
At last! You clever thing. You’ve landed that flexible job and you get to build your work around your life. But take care! This new position may be new for your employer as well and you don’t want to blow any benefits working from home.
Below are a few tips to keep that flexibility a reality and your new lifestyle on an even keel:
Telecommuting Saves The World
Been surfing the telecommuting web and came across Telecommuting Could Speed Economic Recovery by undress4success.com where it’s written that Business Week reported that, based on interviews with a number of esteemed economists, the lack of worker mobility was significantly stifling our economic recovery.
It turns out that mobility in the workforce is essential to prosperity but with the growth of telecommuting that doesn’t mean you have to physically move. We live in a world where a surgeon in Florida can perform an operation, via the web and a robot, on a crushed skull in Manila. –>Read On
Winter weather promoting flexible working arrangements
Image via Wikipedia
Yes – once again the blue moon has risen and the UK has been brought to a halt by a bit of snow. Schools have closed and parents everywhere have to stay at home and send those ‘sorry I’ve got children’ emails to their boss. By the way, get it while you can – I’m writing this post and its snowball time for me.
In turn those bosses and business owners are thinking – ‘if only he/she had access to the database they could get those reports done at home’ or ‘if I had given them all internal skype numbers we could still have that meeting’. However, it will only be a day lost and we can all catch up tomorrow so putting all that in place will be just too much hassle.
5 Home Business Tools That Save Me Hours!
When you spend the majority of your time sat in front of a computer building your home business then anything that can save you time isn’t just useful – it shows on your bottom line. If you can save time on doing the day to day tasks you’ll have more time concentrating on the revenue creating tasks – such as marketing and customer support.
My 5 favourite home business tools are listed below but there is one thing you really need – something I came across by accident after setting up a new computer in my office – a second screen. Trust me, with two open screens my productivity shot through the roof, less ‘tab snapping’ and great for having a ‘resource’ screen and a ‘working’ screen. Try it.
OK, so here they are, if you have any suggestions or if you’ve found a better option let me know in the comments.
1. Lastpass – I love this one. All those passwords you’ve got written down can now be kept in one place. Unlike microsoft explorers password storer this one holds your passwords on a secure server that you access with just one master password. After logging in it fills all those user/pass forms in for you automatically. It even stores profiles that you can use to fill in your address and credit card numbers. This one alone must save me an hour a week – highly recommended.
2. Ping – If you’re still adding the updates to your blog on all the social network sites by hand then you need this badly. Ping.fm takes your blogs feed (or any feed) and then passes it on to over 30 different social sites making sure you get the best exposure. It takes a while to set up the accounts but once done you will literally save days in the month.
3. only2clicks – I’m sure this probably says a lot about my personality type but I really hate bookmarks. A dropdown where you have to search for the site you need or the group that it’s in – hurts my eyes and my brain. The solution for me was only2clicks – a bookmarking site that stores your saved pages as screenshots under relevant tabs. It just produces a much nicer experience for me and I find I can navigate a great deal faster.
4. AWeber – Now I love my members, I really do, but if I had to write an email to every one and welcome them to the site I would get nothing else done. And then there’s the explanation emails, the new feature email, the new jobs email – the list goes on. Thankfully, there’s Aweber. This is the most robust autoresponder service on the web. As soon as a new lead signs up on your website for free info or a call back or to receive a newsletter AWeber starts delivering the info they need. It drip feeds information to your potential customers hopefully convincing them of your service or professionalism until they decide to bite and give you money. It stops your leads from going cold and turns them into eager buyers without you having to constantly keep them up-to-date manually.
5. RSS – We’ve all heard of RSS and you may have clicked that link a few times to see what happens. But it seems that few people in the non-webby business world have actually grasped the power of it. It is the perfect method to consume focused information. If you have a company in the widget industry you can go to every top website or blog in that industry and grab their RSS. Those RSS’s are then put into your favourite reader and you have the most comprehensive and cutting edge newspaper in the world. Every day when you boot up the computer you will have all the latest news from your business world at your finger tips.
For the nuts and bolts of RSS take a look at the video below and don’t forget to sign up to mine.
Those are my 5 favourites, if you have any further suggestions then please comment so we can share them.
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How connectivity & broadband will shape the population
This is an eye-opening piece about how connectivity and broadband will shape the future of not just work practices but the population flow –
Mobile giant Orange’s research shows that better access to both mobile and fixed line broadband could shape the workforce of the future.
Orange has created an interactive map of the country to pinpoint the connectivity hotspots of the future and work out how that will affect the next generation workforce.
Based on the mobile giant’s Connected Britain research, the interactive map went live today and highlights which areas of the UK could benefit from population growth thanks to their internet-based wealth. Conversely, it flags the areas that could see people leave in droves due to lack of mobile and fixed line broadband connectivity.
Indeed, the South West could see its population swell by a whopping 150 per cent by 2015, while Scotland and London’s head counts are set to grow by 50 per cent and 40 per cent respectively, according to the research.
“Our research found that a digitally connected workforce could change the face of Britain as we know it,” said Robert Ainger, Orange’s director of corporate marketing, in a statement.
“Not only could the population itself shift, but the way we work could also fundamentally change. The interactive map means that visitors to the site can quickly check out their current location or somewhere else that takes their fancy, to see how things are likely to pan out there in future.â€
The map also showcases how each region fares when it comes to flexible working, which is generally interlinked with having the right technology in place.
Orange’s research suggested that businesses could save more than £30 billion by being a bit more savvy about the benefits of flexible working practices.
Orange maps UK’s future connectivity hotspots – Original Post by Maggie Holland
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