Why You Should Consider A Home Office
Al Heavens is a Haddonfield, N.J.- based, nationally syndicated, home-improvement writer and author whose newspaper columns, magazine articles and books have been the first word on remodeling for 50 million readers for more than three decades. He is the author of What No One Ever Tells You About Renovating Your Home and Remodeling On The Money: Fifteen Innovative Projects Designed to Add Value to Your Home, and was “The Gadgeteer” on Discovery Channel’s Home Matters program.
In September 2013, I severed the quadriceps tendon in my left leg, an accident requiring reconstructive surgery and eight months in rehab.
I missed just three days of work – the day after the accident, and two days for the surgery.
The reason: My home office, which I had carved from a section of the basement two years before the accident. Even after I recovered fully from the injury, the home office remained my primary workplace, since I found it easier getting things done without others around.
Technology lets us work from home in ways never possible. Personal computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets, WiFi routers, cable modems, and printers that can scan and copy documents have revolutionized the way we do business. No longer must we be within an easy commute of the workplace. Employees can be thousands of miles from the corporate office and still get the job done – in many instances, faster and better.
Since early March, the home office has been undergoing its greatest test: the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless you were considered an “essential employee” whose presence at the office was critical, you probably were asked to work at home to “flatten the curve” — reducing the number of new infections by avoiding contact with others.
Not everyone has a home office or has room for one. My advice: Based on data collected over the last few months, you’ll need one or, in a two-paycheck family, more than one. Start looking for a contractor to help make use of existing space or find ways to create more space.
Many people already had been doing some work at home – a trend that, thanks to technological advances, began in the late 1990s, when the Emerging Technologies Group in Washington, D.C., reported that 52 million Americans were working in some capacity from home, and 11 million were telecommuting at least one day a week.
A lot of those people were either freelancing to help make ends meet or operating home-based businesses, and not actually shifting their work from corporate office to home office.
In addition, the late 1990s saw the growth of the dot.coms – small, start-up, Internet-based companies whose employees tended to telecommute. Fueled by billions of dollars from investors, these companies grew so quickly that experts believed everyone would be working from home within 10 years, showing up at the office for the occasional meeting with bosses and other employees.
Growth in telecommuting has not been consistent, however, since the economy has had its ups and downs over those 23 years, starting with the bursting of the dot com bubble in March 2000, when investors realized that most of these Internet-based companies weren’t making any money.
Job losses resulting from the “Great Recession” of 2008 reduced the numbers of full-time employees, for example, and those who still had jobs were discouraged from working at home by employers trying to ensure maximum production by their much-reduced workforces.
Many people did bring work home to finish in the evening or on weekends because they were now making up for the output of downsized workers, but their numbers couldn’t be determined.
Before the pandemic started, Global Workplace Analytics crunched some numbers to try to track current use of the home office and project growth. What is good about Global’s numbers is that they don’t include the self-employed, just those who work for others.
Five million employees, or 3.6 percent of the American workforce, currently work at home half-time or more. Regular work-at-home has grown 173 percent since 2005, 11 percent faster than total workforce, which grew 15 percent, and 47 times faster than the self-employed segment, which increased 4 percent.
The Gallup State of the Workplace said that 43 percent of American employees work remotely with some frequency.
Global Workplace says 56 percent of Americans have a job that would let them do some work from home; 80 percent would like to work from home some of the time, and 31 percent would actually change jobs to work from home full-time.
Who are these people? A typical telecommuter is college-educated, 45 years old or older, and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees. Seventy-five percent of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees – home or office-based.
So, they can afford a better home office. Or even two. Seriously. My wife and I live in a 2,000-square-foot bungalow that accommodates his and her home offices. This concept, when introduced in the New American Home at the National Association of Homebuilders 1999 Dallas convention had me convulsing with laughter.
I’m not laughing now.
Just one more important statistic. Although it is hard to say how many Americans are working from home during the pandemic, experts have predicted that the experience will change the post-COVID-19 world dramatically – perhaps 25 percent to 30 percent will be working from home permanently.
One important reason is that the last five months have altered the mindset of managers who have had to work at home as well. They now realize that their employees can be as productive, if not more so, when they work at home.
The ability to communicate by Zoom and Facebook Live for meetings has increased the sense of trust, and the knowledge that employers can reduce overhead by letting employees work at home even half the time (an $11,000 savings per worker, according to Global Analytics). Employees could save between $2,500 to $4,000 a year, and more if they could move to a less-expensive area and work remotely.
It is safe to say that we were not prepared for the pandemic, especially for the number of people hanging around the house at the same time – adults working and children going to school virtually.
In many cases, home offices had not been formal affairs – a kitchen or dining room table with a laptop, or part of bedroom, den or living room. With so many people needing a place for work or school, competition for workspace has resulted.
No one really knows how long the pandemic will last, of course, but the data indicate that its impact will change how we work from now on.
So how do we adjust to this “new normal”?
First, we try to find the right space for a home office. Many experts suggest a spare room with a door you can close for privacy.
Not everyone has a spare room, especially people who live in apartments. What about a portion of a bedroom or a walk-in closet? The bedroom would probably require a well-designed-yet-compact desk, adequate lighting and an outlet with a power strip to plug in a laptop, Iphone and tablet. An ergonomically designed chair would be a huge help and easy on the back.
The walk-in closet might require retrofitting – certainly lighting would an issue – and I’d find it claustrophobic (I once turned an apartment walk-in closet into a photography darkroom and spent as little time as possible there).
A guest room would be another choice but remember to plan ahead in the event of visitors (post-pandemic ones, of course).
I suggest that you search online for ideas, and then call a contractor or a designer on how to proceed. A set of professional eyes often finds solutions that would otherwise elude you.
Comfort is the key, really. The more comfortable you are, the more work you are willing to do and the longer you are willing to work. The last two will endear you to your employer even more.
I had been working in the guest room for several years, vacating it only when my older son came home for his rare visits. Moving the home office to our bone-dry basement was, in reality, a search for peace and quiet (OK, OK “man cave”).
With a month off from work because of accrued unused vacation and comp time, and with $2,000 in financing from a freelance piece for a commercial real estate magazine, I chose a section of basement eight-feet-by 22-feet (it is wide enough for the sofa I use for afternoon naps and “thinking.”
The office was designed by someone in his early 60s looking at how he would be using it in his 70s if he was fortunate enough to live that long. The flooring was laid on padding that put a spring in my step and was thus easy on my feet. The lighting is a combination of track and desk lamps, with a floor lamp near the sofa for reading.
I built in bookcases – enough to hold books I had started collecting in college – and incorporating filing cabinets I’ve moved with me for 40 years.
I left the ducts exposed, and drywalled the ceiling above and around them. The walls were soundproofed and insulated. With the basement a consistent 65 degrees all year, a small heater will get the temperature up to 72 in a few minutes (80 if I close the door).
The crowning achievement, however, is the desk, which was built in three sections in the garage, moved to the basement with the help of neighbors and then assembled. It was actually designed for an Internet radio station, which I’ve since closed.
It is three-sided, with shelves on the two sides and enough room under the front section to stretch my legs while I work.
I thought that was a bit of overkill until I severed my left quad. If you have a leg in a brace for eight months, you’ll need to put it somewhere while you are working.