Many people running their freelance translation business are doing it from home, and many are parents – often single parents. Working from home sounds like the ideal work environment, and of course, in many cases it is; however when there are other people to consider (particularly small children) then the success of running both your business and your home come down to one thing – compromise!
You’re Still a Professional
The first important thing to remember when working from home is that it’s very important to present a professional image. You’re going to be competing with people who work in professional offices and present themselves in a professional manner, so you must play by the rules of the business world. This means that you can’t have a baby screaming in the background while you’re on a conference call with a direct client. The trick to combining working from home and doing the right thing by your family is to work smart! The first thing is to avoid phone contact during those busy ‘Mom or Dad’ times as much as is practical and steer your clients towards using email as your method of communication. That being said, people working at home should have a dedicated phone number or business phone line, including a block of time each business day when they can work uninterrupted in their office. Business phone calls should slot into that timeframe.
Taking Care of the Children
If you have very small children at home, the obvious choice is to place them into some sort of day-care for them to be taken care of while you’re working. However, many mothers don’t like to take the day-care route, and for some of them, it’s the very reason why they’re working from home in the first place. So, if finances allow, having help come into your home while you’re working can be the ideal way of taking care of both your business and your family. It only needs to be for (say) a few hours each morning, or whatever hours you need, then you can either work while your little ones are having a rest, or leave the rest of your work hours until the evening when the children are in bed. There are ways of working around having children in the home, but as we mentioned before, it comes down to compromise. Your children’s needs must obviously come first, and if you have a partner who arrives home at the end of the workday then perhaps you can gain some hours of work-time then. But, if the day-care solution works for you, then you’re free to work uninterrupted until such time as you pick your children up from care.
It’s Not All It’s Cracked up to Be!
Even though working-from-home sounds like the easy option, it can definitely be the hardest option of all. Work-at-home parents seem to get caught between two worlds – the world of the working mother and the world of the at-home mother; a world where many people believe that, because you’re at home, you’re free to fit into their schedules.
