Aibu to want to work from home

[3gorgeousgirlies]

Not really an aibu but please help me find a career/ job I can do from home . I’m willing to retrain .

I agree... working from home must be ideal for many

I work nationally for a charity. I can choose when I work from home or when I go to the office. There are times when I must go to the office but I know about this is advance (for instance, there's three days at the end of the month)

What have you done for jobs so far?

I work from home most of the week (I work three days but go in the office usually once). I'm in fundraising for an arts charity.

For me, I requested to work flexibly and my boss said yes, which I think is quite common for home workers - they're not always jobs which can only be done from home, but ones that have evolved that way.

Which makes it hard because you can't really ask about it at interview so you never know which companies are going to be OK with it. I guess you can research places and see who already has home workers. Smaller charities often seem to welcome it. For my place my boss was really pleased when I suggested it because it's cheaper for them and they didn't really have a free desk for me.

We can't really help without an overview of your employment history/quals

Buy a pub

I’ve been a legal Secretary then been at home raising my 3 children . For my mental health I need to be able to work from home . I did the 9-5 for years and it made me unhappy.

Did you do audio typing and transcription as a legal secretary? Lots of people need transcription services (industries like law, journalism, academica, research) and that can be done remotely. Might be worth looking into? I've no idea about pay or whether people are self employed or through agencies I'm afraid.

Maybe look at becoming self-employed as a virtual assistant, specialising in law? I'm sure there will be new/small legal firms that don't want to worry about having an employee, but would value someone to do some of the more mundane stuff on their behalf.

I work from home as a copywriter. I’m freelance so had to build a base of clients. It is really hard to get motivated. You have to be beyond strict with yourself at times or you’ll end up panicking before deadlines. It’s also incredibly lonely. I really miss having the support of colleagues, or just someone to have coffee with, but this is the only job that fits right now. When you work for yourself you also can’t take the piss. I feel like I have to be at 100% all the time, whether I’ve got a cold or morning sickness, you start to realise just how much of the 9-5 workday is spent being unproductive.

I have friends who’ve done transcription work. It’s terribly paid. Barely scraping minimum wage, plus you pay for your own equipment. I know someone who worked for Enterprise rent a car and did customer service work from home. But again, there’s an outlay to buy all the kit.

I'm a Management Accountant / Finance Manager and work mostly from home. My role is fairly easy to do off site because it's mostly electronic. I go into the office once a week. Most people at my firm work at least one day a week from home. As office space rental costs are becoming higher and higher many more firms are encouraging home working at least some of the time so that desk space can be shared. I just need a laptop, phone and printer.

I agree with a lot of what's been said by DingDong - I'm a copywriter too.

There are very few "employed" jobs working at home where you have all the benefits of being a member of staff, sick pay, holiday pay etc but working at home. People who are doing this have generally been office based and then negotiated a change.

Most people working at home are self-employed. That's not a scary thing to do, but does mean no holiday pay, sick pay, paying your own NI and sorting your own tax. On the flip side, you set your own agenda and work when you want to, or after negotiation with your clients. I wouldn't give up the flexibility of self employment now to go back to the 9-5.

If you have skills as a legal secretary then that is certainly something you could pursue. Small legal firms will require adhoc support - but there is the issue of data protection which means some solicitors might not want to send info out of the offices. There is related work - i used to do 5 blogs a week for a legal firm finding topical legal stories to blog about.

I work from home, just sort of fell into via an agency; so I'd suggest reaching out to a few recruitment agencies and talking to them.

Thanks everyone

Following with interest