Our consultants spend most of their time working with a variety of small and medium sized organisations, and that means a lot of working remotely. It differs from, say, interim work where you are working with one employer for a significant period of time, and usually have to spend a fair proportion of that time on their premises.
One of the key aspects about the service our consultants offer is building relationships with clients and getting to know them and their business well, and clearly this does involve a certain amount of time spent visiting them and meeting them. But working with lots of smaller businesses, the reality is that most of the actual client work they do is done remotely, whether it’s giving advice or drafting letters/contracts.
There are several great things about working this way. You don’t have to commute to an office (unless you choose to rent office space, and even then you can choose to travel outside rush hour) and can work from home, or at a hotel, a coffee shop, a park (weather permitting of course!), the local library or anywhere you fancy.
But it’s not just about picking your own convenient working location, it also means doing the work at the best time for you. For some people, that is mainly about arranging things around other commitments. It could be other client work, marketing activities or meetings, or family or other personal commitments. Being able to work remotely for me means that if I have a busy week with lots of family commitments, I can do more work in an evening or at the weekend to ensure I keep up with things.
But even if you don’t have other commitments to arrange things around, working remotely still has advantages, and a big one is being able to work at the times when you personally are most productive. We’re not all made the same and we’re not all massively productive between 9am and 5pm. So as long as you have the self-awareness to be able to identify when you get most done, working remotely can be fabulous for making the most of your time.
Personally I am usually very productive first thing in the morning (I usually start work at 8), then have a definite lull in the afternoon, then a burst of productivity in the evening, so I do try and maximise that by arranging the various things I need to do to take that into account.
If you want to find out more about working as a consultant with face2faceHR and making the most of working remotely, do get in touch.