What are the Advantages of Operating your Business from Home?

Whether you’re considering where to operate your new business or simply looking at moving your business’s premises elsewhere, there are a number of options that present themselves as viable – each with its own set of characteristics that trade off against the other.

Choosing whether you operate your business from an office building, your own home, or through a desk rental building will have a large impact on your operations, affecting areas such as accessibility for you and your clients, the amount of control you have over your working environment, and the ability you have to move quickly and cheaply once the time comes to take your operations elsewhere once again. 

With working from home and hybrid working practices now commonplace within the working world, as well as making your own living as a freelancer being more accessible than ever, it’s now becoming clear that the home is not actually such a bad place to work after all – especially as studies have reported better wellbeing and attitudes towards work in those that work from home. 

Of course, there are some who are veterans of the office environment and prefer the routine of brushing up and getting out of the house to get work done. Essentially, the end goal for everyone is to find a way that allows them to enjoy living and working to the best possible standard. 

Read on to find out more about why operating your own business out of your home can be a very good idea, and how it compares to some of the other options on offer. 

Significantly Reduce Costs

A huge benefit that cannot be understated is the significant reduction in costs one can achieve if they decide to operate their business from their own home. 

The fact that you are simply working from the home that you already pay towards means that you aren’t actually taking on any more major costs for your business’s premises or entering into contracts that may influence your future operations – including the ability to move on to somewhere else. 

Depending on the size of your business, and the number of employees operating under you, office rental prices in the UK average between £150 and £1500 per month, and that’s not taking into account the costs of energy, travelling to and from the office’s destination, and outfitting the space with the appropriate technology and furniture. 

The viability in setting up your office from home also depends on how many employees you have, and whether it’s best for you as a team to set up on the same premises or not. Thankfully, with the emergence of reliable, high quality and instant communications such as business instant messengers and video calling services such as Zoom and Teams, working together no longer requires having your staff in the same room. 

Flexibility and Convenience

Another invaluable benefit to setting up your own business from your home is the flexibility and convenience that comes with the absence of bosses scheduling your time and no morning commute. 

If you’re someone who prioritizes their passions over their work and likes to have the freedom to see their friends and family when they are available, being your own boss means that only you can decide whether or not that’s appropriate, and make decisions based on the day-to-day circumstances rather than general policies.

While it’s important to set boundaries when working from within your home, if you have responsibilities such as pets to feed and walk, or babies to change, entertain, or put to bed, working from home means that you can keep an eye on them and free up time for the primary care-giver to look after themselves. 

Another benefit to convenience and flexibility when working from home is having access to your kitchen. While many businesses have kitchens in their office buildings, they offer nothing like the privacy or resources to cook delicious working lunches that one needs to power through the afternoon, rather than being pushed towards fast food options and supermarket meal deals.

Complete control 

Having complete control over your working situation can seem like a daunting prospect – as for most people, it’s a case of having all the important working structures already in place when you arrive at a company, so that you can be onboarded and effectively integrated. 

This doesn’t take much initiative from the employee side and means you can start earning your money and being valuable to the team as soon as possible.

Setting up your own business means that there is a lot more work to be done, such as setting up a home office, buying tech such as a laptop for home business, and maintaining boundaries with both family and clients – but it’ll give you far more agency over your day-to-day life, and for many people, that’s worth it.