Globally, employees have been introduced to a newer, more efficient and flexible lifestyle which is working from home. Increasingly, companies have realized that it saves plenty of time and resources when individuals are provided with the option to complete their tasks within their home office. Besides that, there are numerous advantages of working from home.

This blog is the ultimate guide for jobs that you can do from home, answering all related questions while detailing the advantages and disadvantages that come with this type of work. Along with that, it guides on which industries are more remote-friendly and where you can begin your search for remote work.

Why Working From Home is New Reality?

Due to the global crisis of COVID-19, almost all work settings have been forced to become more flexible in their schedules and setups. In this way, companies had to think of creative ways to continue to engage their employees in work, maintain a proper collaboration and continue to be productive. Companies that did not want to face financial pressures while also keeping their employees had to shift to this newer reality. In the US alone, 44% of people have permanently shifted to working from home five days a week

Studies conducted in the year 2020 have revealed that work from home jobs increase performance levels by 13 percent. Additionally, employees are more than 52 percent less likely to take off from work if they are provided with work from home opportunities. Employees are more satisfied with their job if they are given flexibility through the option of working remotely.

Seeing such a huge boom in the work industry because of remote working opportunities, numerous people within the workforce have shifted towards this trend. It helps them maintain their presence within the home along with their family. With the benefit of being able to earn and work at the same time. As a result of this transformation, people had to make their offices inside their homes.

In order to manage the new work from home lifestyle, there are numerous innovative gadgets and free services which you can use to effectively meet your goals. Zoom can be used as an effective recording and teleconferencing tool. Google Calendar can help in managing work schedule, reminders and deadlines. Grammarly can provide help in making documents, emails and drafts completely error-free. Purchasing noise cancelling headphones can help with audio during a meeting. A speedy internet can help you in effectively attending meetings any time.

Work from Home Pros & Cons

Working remotely involves making certain arrangements where one’s home needs to be converted into an office. For this purpose, both employees and employers need to keep in mind how to keep themselves involved in work and, at the same time, create a work-life balance. If this balance is not achieved, things may fall apart as well. 

Here are some potential advantages and disadvantages of work from home:

Remote Work Advantages

  1. Working from home allows you to have flexible working hours. In this sense, you can manage work and personal errands on your own terms. 
  2. There is less distraction from coworkers and their chit-chats when you are working remotely. This helps in saving time and retaining focus on work. 
  3. You are able to save the commuting expenses of physically going to the office. Along with that, you can save commuting time as well which can be used to spend some more quality time with your family.

Online Work Disadvantages

  1. While working from home, the distinction between work time and leisure time can become blurred which can lead to mental and physical exhaustion.
  2. Since all communication is being done virtually, it can sometimes cause miscommunications and misunderstanding with instructions or messages. 
  3. You may get tired of staying at the same house, same place and same room throughout the day. As a result, you have to make an effort for a change of scenery. 

Work From Home – Friendly Industries

Being more and more dependent on technology, almost all of the industries of the world have visualized the concept of working from home. This allows benefits for both the employers and employees simultaneously. The employees get to have flexible hours and less commuting hours. On the other hand, the employers have less overhead. People can effectively manage their homes as well as work, and thus, they can secure a work-life harmony in their lives. 

The top most industries which are effectively employing and providing the best work from home jobs include: 

(1) Computer and Information Technology

(2) Customer Service

(3) Medical and Health Management

(4) Accounting and Finance

(5) Sales

(6) Education and Training

  1. Computer and Information Technology

Being inherently dependent on computer technology to execute most of their tasks, this industry is bound to be initiating work from home positions. The computer industry involves managing security of websites, constructing newer software programs and testing software. Their jobs can be easily regulated through online mediums. Their daily tasks can be vehemently supervised and provided to them by their managers remotely. Besides, they can easily be contacted through online chatting and conferencing platforms.

  1. Customer Service

The idea of customer service is to provide assistance to the clients which can now be done from the comfort of your home. In order to work for this industry, you mostly need an internet connection, a computer and a phone. Companies usually provide training beforehand as well as offer similar benefits to those of in-house employees while also remaining flexible.

  1. Medical and Health Management

In the healthcare industry, the professionals are trained to oversee and provide various health and medical facilities to their clients. The internet allows these individuals to directly communicate things through it. They can check their facility’s operations, observe the patients and supervise the staff through the cameras directly on their computers.

  1. Accounting and Finance

The field of accounting and finance majorly deals with paperwork, bills, invoices and documentation. All of this can be managed right from a computer. The finance team can connect with one another through teleconferencing where they can discuss matters with one another easily. Besides that, digital documentations can be effortlessly sent and received through the internet as well.

  1. Sales

These days, even the customers prefer to stay home and do online shopping more than ever before. It saves plenty of time and effort. Thus almost every renowned business must have a solid online presence for their customers. It helps in remotely managing their purchases and gaining profit without having to personally be in a particular location. Besides that, if a customer needs any kind of advice or wants to ask a particular question, they can easily do that online via the chat or call option from the website.

  1. Education and Training

E-learning has brought in a big boom in the industry. Parents with children in need of extra learning opportunities and people with more free time have turned to websites to learn a new language or skill. The bonus for those looking to teach online is that often times the instructors do not need to have specific background or training, and even if you do then there are even more opportunities for you to teach online.

Work from Home Jobs Types

As more and more companies are promoting and allowing work from home, plenty of legitimate work from home jobs are opening up for people. It has allowed people to save their time which is wasted in commuting and to utilize it in achieving more everyday. Here, this section would be elaborating on different kinds of designations which you can take up and can also do as part time work from home jobs:

  1. Translation

Various multinational companies regularly require the services of translators. They may need to translate and transcribe certain documents or conversations. This job can be particularly useful for individuals who are competent in using rare or uncommon languages and translating them into English language. 

  1. Virtual Assistance

In this case, you can remotely provide assistance from home. You need to be available for communicating through chat, teleconferencing and calling platforms. Moreover, you can respond to emails, type documents, contact clients, handle social media, schedule appointments and enter data remotely – making it an effective work from home job.

  1. Customer Service 

These days, many companies are in favor of hiring remote representatives for managing customer service. For this job, you need to make inbound calls, help clients, answer queries, document account information and make orders. All of which can be done through phones and computers. The only requirement is to have good communication and interpersonal skills along with fluency in speaking English language.

  1. Online Tution

There are plenty of students out there who are struggling to pass their courses. An online tutor can help teach them remotely. The instructors can use the medium of video calling and conferencing to teach students from around the world simultaneously. Various modes of assessments like quizzes, assignments, and presentations can be easily adapted to aid the learners in comprehending each module of the course.

  1. Freelance Writing

Content is definitely needed by every company to market their company and maintain a social media presence. As a result, more and more companies hire writers to create captivating content for them. The writers are expected to be good at researching, knowing the latest trends and be competent in communicating ideas through writing. Their language skills need to be top-notch for this job. The freelance writers can easily work from home because this job only requires internet connection and a personal computer.

  1. Graphic Designing

Every company represents itself using a logo that is aligned with the objectives and theme of that organization. Likewise, various companies have to disseminate their message using posters, flyers and infographics. Furthermore, game developers need a particular design to make their application stand out from the rest of the online applications. Graphic Designers fulfill all such needs of the aforementioned companies and organizations as these individuals are able to design and develop the content as per the expectations of their company. Thus, there is always an ever increasing demand for graphic designers in the digital marketplace.

  1. Social Media Marketing

The pandemic has turned the tables in favor of online sale and purchase increasing the volume of digital consumers who prefer to search for the product of interest using social media platforms. Resultantly, traditional advertising techniques are no longer able to attain the attention of digital consumers who are more critical in terms of their time spent online and the content being presented on different forums. Social Media Marketing is gaining momentum in generating the organic traffic towards some specific product or service and provides multiple job opportunities for Social Media Marketing experts to get affiliated with different companies and get paid for attracting the attention of online consumers.

  1. Videography

Most digital consumers spend their time searching for video content on different topics available on forums like youtube, dailymotion and vimeo etc. As a result, there is a booming economy that targets these digital consumers by creating videos to spark their interest. In other words, videographers are in demand nowadays, especially those that can collaborate with different companies to create video content on their products. These videos can vary from being an unboxing video, a presentation, drone videography and much more. Individuals can also provide their video editing services to such companies to refine their own videos.

  1. Voice Over Artist

If you have strong vocals, then a market awaits to utilize your skills and market your content. There are various companies looking for voice over experts who provide the script and the individuals are supposed to record the voice over to integrate in the video before releasing the finalized video among relevant consumers.

  1. Influencer Marketing

If you have a network of followers on social media, you can be contacted by various brands and companies to become their ambassador and play the role of an influencer to market their product among the target audience. Digital consumers have become quite critical with respect to the time they spent using different social networking forums. Resultantly, they prefer to skip most of the impertinent ads and view only the relevant ones if considered important. Therefore, various companies prefer nowadays to introduce their brand among the audience through influencers who earn a handsome amount for marketing the product and are approached by many other companies for carrying out the same task. 

For more details, one can visit the following links: 

Work from Home Friendly Companies

The growing trend of working remotely has affected each and every popular company around the world. Numerous companies have tackled this situation quite creatively by effectively engaging their employees while maintaining social distancing. Moreover, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many companies have started offering and hiring remote employees as well. 

These industries are also offering entry level work from home jobs as well.  The following are some companies who are friendly towards the idea of working from home for their employees:

  1. Liveops
  2. Sykes
  3. Assurance
  4. Alorica
  5. Clickworker
  6. Papa
  7. Stella & Dot
  8. Teleperformance
  9. Preply
  10. Appen
  11. Literably
  12. Opinion Outpost

These companies are quite popular names in the market. The fact that they are also promoting work from home jobs automatically implies that this trend is not ending with the pandemic. Rather, this opportunity will continue to grow and remaining companies would ultimately have to adapt to this trend as well

Work from Home Tips

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, newer work policies have been introduced by the companies particularly on how to deal with full-time work from home. These policies have been created while minimizing physical human contact and enhancing dependability on the internet as a resource for connectivity. Employees have been made to restrict themselves at home and have to stick to using their computer for establishing contacts with their workplace.

 

Due to all these newer work policies, employees have been facing hard times in coping up with this routine. Particularly when employees have kids at home, it becomes even more difficult to have quiet work time. For knowing how to tackle work with kids at home, read this article: https://www.appjobs.com/blog/21-tips-to-help-you-work-from-home-with-kids-around-during-covid-19

Here are some tips which can help in better management of both work and health in this situation:

  1. Designate a Workplace

For keeping work and home life still distinct, you need to allocate separate spaces to each of them. Employees should designate a separate room and table for doing office work, where they are separated from the rest of the home as much as possible. This will allow them to restrict their office hours in that workplace. After that, they can allow themselves to go back to their homespace. This will maintain a healthy balance for them.

  1. Dress Up

Being at home can easily cause you to lose motivation to dress up for work. This should be avoided as it does not signal the mind and body that one is going for work. It makes you feel lazy, casual and less productive. Hence, it is highly important to get dressed up and feel fresh, ready to start work! This article can further guide on this: https://www.appjobs.com/blog/how-to-work-from-home-successfully 

  1. Define Your Working Hours

In general, 40 hours are specified for an employee to complete in a week of service during the daylight hours. However, the official routine overlaps with one’s responsibilities at home. Therefore, it is suggested to define some hours at home which are purely dedicated to carrying out the official duties. This schedule can be shared with other members of the family to avoid any kind of distraction during the official hours.

  1. Don’t Forget to Communicate

An office provides various opportunities to socialize with your colleagues at regular intervals. However, working from home makes you an introvert due to the absence of such interactive sessions. An online meeting or videoconference can solve such problems giving the remote employees a chance to collaborate as they would do in the office meeting room. 

  1. Join the Online Training Programs

Most of the organizations arrange different training programs for mentoring their employees and providing them with a chance to informally interact with one another for tasks other than their usual routine. The vacuum of these forums due to the prevailing pandemic situation can be filled with various online training programs which are free of cost and allocate a certificate of completion. This would hone the abilities of employees on one hand and update the resumes of individuals as well.

  1. Use Office Furniture

Although the house environment does not provide a comfortable environment for managing the office work. Using the office furniture in the designated place can be a good start. The office desk helps you to keep one’s files, folders, stationery and the pertinent documents all at one place. In addition, the person can have quick access to the printing facility by placing one on the same desk. Therefore, the use of office furniture can facilitate in developing the context for managing office work from home.

  1. Take Tea / Coffee Break

The employees in general are habitual of either taking their tea as soon as they reach the office or the time of responding to all their emails. This small cup keeps them active throughout the day and should be taken with the same spirit at home. If you can take your morning tea alongside some gossip with fellow workers, it can help you be motivated throughout the day. The same environment can be tried using a group call feature of various networking software and mobile applications.

  1. Avoid Monotony

Although the office hours are specified, you have to undergo various phases of transition from traveling to the office, meeting various fellows on the way to the workstation, interacting with team lead, taking small breaks for discussion and returning back to home. It is suggested to develop these transition phases while working from home to provide your mind respite as well as different activities of engagement to retain attention and interest in the assigned tasks.

  1. Specify Social Media Hours

An individual working from home has easy access to one’s smartphone to enter into the world of social media and entertainment whenever one is interested. In other words, working from home can become a real test of nerves when a person is consistent of scrolling down web pages and chatting with fellows even at office. Therefore, it is wise to put the mobile phone at a side for some specific hours to avoid getting distracted with constant notifications and phone beeps.

  1. Stay Away From Pets

Although it seems hard to believe but your pets are excited to have their friend with them to play with. Resultantly, there will be moments when the pet dogs may throw a ball to indicate they are interested to play or have a walk with you. Therefore, turnout can be a great distraction especially at the time of managing work from home. So, the pets can be kept in some room or children can be engaged with these pets to provide the silence that one anticipate to get at home.

Work from Home Future & Predictions

The contemporary trends of working within an office environment where the whole team sits under a single roof is witnessing a gradual change. Even the concept of being employed and how an individual is supposed to carry out assigned duties is changing. In other words, work from home is being redefined as working from anywhere. Next, there was a clear line differentiating an In-house Full Time Job from a Part Time Online Job. This line has gotten thin combining the nature of jobs into a Hybrid Job where an employee has to complete the online tasks from home and has to remain ready to meet in person at office where considered necessary. Technology will continue to advance and play a pivotal role to act as a virtual assistant for all the employees managing their work from home. Various applications will continue to come into the market to facilitate employees collaboration, meetings, drafting of letters and memos, sharing presentations and presenting findings.

Work From Home Jobs FAQ

What kind of work can I do from home?

There are various opportunities which knock at your door when you start earning from home. The only thing required is to identify your strengths and align them with the different online jobs available in the market. The vacancies to fill vary from being a teacher, an accountant, transcriptionist, content analyst, accountant, writer, graphic designer, voice over artist, customer care representative, translator, SEO Expert, Focus Group Participant, and a Nurse.

What is the highest paying work from home jobs?

Get rid of the misconception that remote jobs don’t pay well. There are numerous online professions which offer salary packages, some even offer benefits as any regular position would. Some of these include Sales Executive, Product Manager, Mobile Developer, Marketing Director, Cybersecurity consultant and analyst, Psychologists, Technical Support Manager and Software Engineer as well.

Can I work from home with no experience?

Yes. There is an even greater probability for a person to excel in an online career as most of the individuals have their experience working within an office environment. On the other hand, if a person intends to establish an online business,you would be among the pioneers under the prevailing times where most of the companies and organizations are seeking the services of freelancers and gig workers. Therefore, online experience would help you to stand out compared to all the other candidates who have worked in a physical workplace. There are plenty of entry level work from home jobs in cleaning, customer service, driving, tutoring, etc.

What is the best online job at home?

There is no limit to how one may search for the best for an online job. It all depends on one’s interest, hobbies, area of expertise and how one wishes to spend leisure time. For example, one can become an online teacher on the basis of strong communication skills. If a person is known for strong creative writing skills, sky’s the limit to start earning from home as a large volume of online content in the form of blogs, articles and reviews is being generated on a daily basis. 

Therefore, freelancers can contribute a lot in the form of articles and blogs. A strong proficiency in English language can pave the way for an individual to become a proofreader to revise and edit the content being written for different websites. 

In addition, if a person is bilingual, translators are in high demand to gain the attention of a wider audience who are otherwise unable to understand the content in other languages. Likewise, there are various forums where an individual is just required to register and become part of a survey. After following the instructions and completing the survey within the specified timeframe, to earn money in the form of gift cards or even cash payouts. You can even earn money by simply taking pictures of the receipts of the items you already typically buy and uploading them to apps such as Fetch.

Interestingly, there are job opportunities where an individual can simply earn the money by playing video games and writing reviews, or watching videos alongside clicking the online ads appearing on those videos. Each click is rewarded as per the assigned pay scaled on the basis of the number of clicks. As well, you can earn money by testing mobile apps and websites then giving your feedback on your experience.

Conclusion

There is a wide variety as well as availability of online jobs and we are now seeing a gradual shift in an employee’s habit to working from one’s comfort zone, that is, an individual’s home. Despite having some setbacks with regards to working online, there are several advantages including autonomy and flexibility of timings when you begin working from home. 

For those who are new to the concept of an online job or working from home, the article provides some useful tips to start with an online career starting from transforming a specific section of the house into an office, where to find legitimate work from home jobs and how to be successful in those roles.