...And A Few Drawbacks

 

Although working from home has many attractions, it does possess a few potential drawbacks as well. Some of the main points to consider are set out in this chapter.

 

May disrupt family life – Running a business from home means you and your family’s domestic lives will inevitably be affected. Obviously you will need a space in the house to work that might otherwise be used by other family members. In addition, many self-employed individuals have to work long and irregular hours, and your family may need to get used to you being in and out at all times. You may have to work during the evenings, public holidays and weekends, when most ‘normal’ people are at leisure. Furthermore, in many businesses clients may wish to contact you by phone outside standard office hours (this applies especially if you provide a service to private individuals, e.g. window cleaning or gardening). Family members will therefore need to become accustomed to receiving calls from clients and be briefed on how to handle them. If you have other heavy phone users in the house (e.g. teenagers!) you may need to consider having a separate line installed for business calls.

 

May be too many distractions – Family and domestic matters can also interfere with your business. Friends and relatives who would never dream of interrupting you at a ‘proper’ job may think nothing of phoning up or arriving unannounced, not realising (or perhaps caring) that you are ‘at work’. Regular interruptions of this nature can seriously reduce your productivity, and hence your income. Even if you avoid this problem, working from home offers a huge range of potential distractions, from pets and family matters, through shopping and household chores, to gardening and watching television. You will need to be self-disciplined, or you can fritter away many working hours on non-productive (in business terms, at least) activities such as these.

 

May be lonely – Running a business from home can be lonely at times. This applies especially if you live on your own, where in some businesses (e.g. freelance writing or computer programming) you may not speak to another person face-to-face (apart from perhaps the post office clerk) for days on end. Even if you do have a family – or at least a spouse/partner – you may find the isolation during the day difficult to bear. This applies especially if you have previously worked in a busy office or factory, or you have a naturally sociable temperament.

 

Clients may be deterred – Customers who come to see you in person may be put off to find that you work from home. However unreasonably, they may deduce from this that you are not serious about your business and that you might fail to deliver a professional standard of product or service. Even if you conduct your business entirely by mail, some people find what is obviously the use of a private address off-putting. You can get around this problem to some extent by using a PO Box (see Chapter 12, Help from the Post Office) or a separate accommodation address.

 

Can be hard to get away from work – If you work from home, you may find that work and domestic life become indivisible and it is very hard to ‘switch off’ and relax when the day’s work is done. People who have previously worked in a separate establishment often find the journey between home and workplace provides a valuable psychological dividing line. When your home is also your workplace this line is gone, and the distinction between work and leisure can therefore easily become blurred.

 

May need greater home security – If you have high-value, easily portable equipment such as computers, fax machines and so on, this may make your home a tempting target for burglars. If, as with many businesses, you have to publicise your address on letterheads, advertisements and so on, this will unfortunately increase the risk of your property being targeted. You may therefore need to increase the level of security in your home, perhaps fitting a burglar alarm, security lighting/cameras, window locks, and so on.

 

Planning and other restrictions may apply – There are often planning restrictions on running businesses from homes in residential areas. This is most likely to be a problem if your proposed business is likely to cause noise or other irritation to your neighbours: printing, for example, or car repairs. If you live in rented accommodation, the landlord may object to your running a business from his property; and if you are buying your house with the aid of a loan or mortgage, the lenders may be unhappy. There may also be terms in the lease or deeds of your property prohibiting its use for business purposes. And there is a possibility that running a business from home may mean that you become liable for business rates as well as your normal council tax. This and similar matters are further discussed in Chapter 7, Planning Permission and Business Rates.

 

None of these problems is insurmountable, but it is undoubtedly true that working from home is more likely to be suitable for some businesses – and individuals – than others. The best types of business for running from home are those that are small and office-based – or based predominantly on clients’ premises – rather than those that require workshops and machinery or selling directly to the public.