10 Reasons Working From Home Still Rocks

10 Reasons Working From Home Still Rocks
Rich Rao of Google: Ever-Evolving to Meet Changing Small Business Needs
Lots of Feedback is Good News: Cartoon

Posted: 08 Mar 2013 11:00 AM PST

The idea of working from home remains alive and well with small business owners.

Last week, news that Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, was discontinuing a policy of allowing company employees to work from home electrified the Web. A similar policy decision from Best Buy has also caused ripples.

In the U.S., an estimated 13 million, or one in 10 employees, work from home. Small business owners and entrepreneurs work from home as a way of reducing overhead and increasing flexibility. They often have their employees working from home for the same reasons.

[Click Image for Full Version]

Why Working From Home Is Still A Good Idea

Everybody’s Doing It

Don’t let anyone tell you working from home is a bad career move or that it will stop you from achieving your full potential. A list of great achievers who work from home includes no less than entrepreneur Richard Branson, star Amazon engineer James Hamilton, personal training and weight loss CEO Jeff Hyman, and Craig Newmark, Founder of Craigslist. Business Insider

You’re Always Accessible

Don’t believe anyone who tells you that working from home will make you less accessible to clients, suppliers or business partners. Or that employees who work for your business remotely will somehow be harder to manage. One of the upsides (or downsides) often discussed about working from home is that you’re always accessible. Chicago Tribune

You Commute a Lot Less

According to a Stanford University study, an estimated 600,000 in the U.S. had “mega-commutes in 2010, traveling nearly 90 minutes or 50 miles for work.” Imagine the time lost on your startup or small business due to travel that’s not absolutely necessary. For any business that can be operated virtually or from a mobile location, cutting out the commute means obvious increases in productivity. The Wall Street Journal

You Eliminate Distraction

Yes, working in an office can offer synergy and chemistry, but it also offers distraction. “For me, it was really challenging working in an office, because you have people walking, stopping by, knocking on your door and bringing you birthday cake,” says self-employed marketer Kelly Ann Collins, who doesn’t miss it at all. CNN Living

You Develop Better Work Habits

The key when working from home or managing a staff who does is to develop an effective policy. In this way, work from home arrangements can be superior to working in an office. They force you to think through the way you manage your own work habits and those of your staff. Randy Conley, Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies, makes these suggestions about what your policy should look like. Blanchard LeaderChat

Reaping the Benefits of Working From Home

You Create a Better Workforce

An infographic from remote desktop app provider Splashtop shows the many benefits of allowing employees to work from home. For example, those working from home are 10 to 20 percent more productive. Also, 76 percent of telecommuters are willing to put in extra hours and 36 percent of employees would choose telecommuting over a pay raise. With benefits like this, what business owner in his or her right mind could refuse? DashBurst

You Create Ideal Conditions

The success of a great work from home program lies in how it is implemented. Here Sandra Wiley, COO of Boomer Consulting, leads us through the steps needed to create the perfect work from home program for your business. Steps include talking with your employees, making work from home an option instead of a mandate and utilizing the right technology to make your work from home program effective. CPA Practice Advisor

You Make Pragmatic Choices

Looking at the work from home option, either as a solopreneur or a small business owner with staff, forces you to consider the most efficient way to operate your company. Some jobs cannot be done from home over an Internet connection. But for those that can, Lisa Belkin, Senior Columnist on Life/Work/Family, says entrepreneurs and employees must decide how the office of the future will be run. The Huffington Post

You Spur Innovation

Prerna Gupta, Chief Product Officer at Smule Inc., wants to reinvent the office as a place to communicate ideas and strengthen personal and professional bonds. However, Gupta insists that the real creative insights on which companies base their major innovative leaps come from quiet times spent alone. That alone time is created by having employees working from home at least some of the time, and from giving them the trust and tools to do so. The New York Times

It Just Makes Sense

In the end, the main reason small business owners and solopreneurs should consider the work from home approach is that with the technology available, it is often the most practical choice. Executive coach, author, and entrepreneur, Jennie Wong, says there’s no place like home for your small business today. Just keep some important tips in mind that will allow you to manage your home business and office without loosing your mind. McClatchey

The post 10 Reasons Working From Home Still Rocks appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Rich Rao of Google: Ever-Evolving to Meet Changing Small Business Needs

Posted: 08 Mar 2013 08:00 AM PST

These days, technology evolves at the speed of light, as do the technology needs of small business. Rich Rao, Director of Worldwide Sales and Operations for Google, joins Brent Leary to discuss Google small business technology and the changing technological needs of small businesses.

* * * * *

google small business Small Business Trends: Can you tell people a little bit about yourself and your background?

Rich Rao: I have been at Google for five and a half years and have been building up the Google Apps business during that time frame.

I came to Google because I wanted to be on the leading edge of technology. Hence, I wanted to make a move into the consumer market. But when I came here, I quickly realized what Google's vision for the enterprise was. Essentially the company wanted to take all of this great, leading edge consumer technology and bring it to the enterprise.

So in a lot of ways, what I am doing now brings consumer technology to small businesses. Helping them to understand how to use that technology.

Small Business Trends: You have been at this for about five years with respect to Google Apps. What are some of the biggest changes when it comes to small business and their need for technology?

Rich Rao: I witnessed a three-phase evolution over the last decade. The first phase is what I would call one of poor choice. Essentially, small businesses were faced with a poor choice when it came to technology. Either they had to choose from software that was built for a large company that carried a huge price tag, or they chose inexpensive software that lacked the functionality they needed.

Then, right around 2006, comes cloud computing. All of a sudden, the playing field is level. For the first time small companies had access to all of the same technology that larger companies had and features that small businesses never dreamed of.

Right now I think we are in what I would call the third phase of technology for small businesses. This phase I would call “work the way that you live.” What has happened is employees have discovered that since the best technologies are in their personal lives, I am going to try to bring it into work.

Small Business Trends: What area has Google Apps had the most impact on regarding the way small businesses interact and collaborate in the Cloud?

Rich Rao: The first is this idea that we live in a multi-screen world. People just expect to do things on multiple devices from anywhere. Google Apps really enables that through its cloud computing technology. What we have found is that 90% of employees expect to do work across multiple devices.

The second effect that we have seen is this notion that the speed of business has increased. Technology has not only kept pace, but it has enabled the speed to occur. So real time collaboration is an area of huge investments for Google, one that we are seeing a lot of business take advantage of.

What they are finding is that the employees in small businesses can make edits in a document in real time and see what each other is editing. They can connect via video conferencing with Hangouts and it is all simply integrated within their calendar system. So it is easy way to connect and do things in the real time. It is the second thing that I have seen.

Small Business Trends: Under the Google Apps umbrella, are there any particular applications that you think companies aren't taking advantage of?

Rich Rao: Google+ is an example of a new product that we introduced. I think there are huge benefits of potential out there for small businesses in a couple of ways. One challenge small businesses face is around marketing their company. Google Plus provides some instant ways for a company to have a personalized page that allows them to connect with their own customers and partners in a very intimate way and develop those connections.

Google+ has integrated in a key feature that few people have and that is called Hangouts. That feature allows for multiple users to be in real time video conferencing with great, unique features.

Small Business Trends: How difficult it is to keep up with today's small business looking to this technology to help them compete?

Rich Rao: That is a great question. Technology is changing so fast that there are so many small businesses who are developing their own dream scenario use cases. Part of what we do is, we study how our own customers are using our technology.

For example, if you are a designer, all of a sudden a dream scenario is becoming obvious to you. You can create an appointment in the calendar and if you include the address, Google will tell you when you need to leave your office to arrive at that location on time. Google maps will help you navigate there in your car. Then once you arrive, you have all of your information in Google Drive.

So as a designer, if you are meeting with a prospective client, you can review your designs and all of your content in real time on a tablet. You can take notes and when you return to your office, you can email that prospective client. You can follow-up and share the very content that you looked at in the meeting.

All of that is just part of what comes in the standard suite of Google Apps. We are also working on making even the most rudimentary parts of that easier.

Small Business Trends: I still feel a lot of small businesses and business people in general are living in their email applications. Are you seeing that as well? And will we see that going forward?

Rich Rao: There was something written about the death of email at one point and that hasn't occurred at all. I think it goes to show that some of us can't predict what will happen. But what we will certainly observe is that people are spending as much time in the emails as they have before.

In a lot of ways, the main change that has happened is that the connection points have been increased between email and other parts of application suites. So for example, with any email you can actually now preview a document right from your email. You can connect to the Hangouts I mentioned earlier from email. So I think that the integration points have become better, stronger and more useful.

As far as the future patterns, as I mentioned, we will see how usage evolves. Then naturally build functionality in the areas where we see users want to go to.

This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.

The post Rich Rao of Google: Ever-Evolving to Meet Changing Small Business Needs appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Lots of Feedback is Good News: Cartoon

Posted: 08 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PST

business cartoon

Before I was a cartoonist, and even before my first day job, I was a musician. In fact, I went to college and got my music degree playing the trombone.

I was a fairly good jazz trombonist and even played professionally for a very short time before hanging up my mouthpiece. Which means that I’ve spent a lot of time with microphones. And as I’m sure you ‘ve experienced, there’s no worse sound on the planet than that squealing microphone feedback.

Of course, feedback also refers to getting information about how people feel about things.

So, being a cartoonist, you add a little positive feedback, a little negative feedback – and you get a business cartoon like this.

The post Lots of Feedback is Good News: Cartoon appeared first on Small Business Trends.