Setting up office to work from home

pollyanna24

I posted on this subject a week or so, but can't for the life of me find the thread (so any tips on that would be great ).

Anyhows, I've been trying to do more research into the subject of working from home a couple of days a week (want to be fully prepared before I present my case to my boss).

I work as a legal secretary in London to a solicitor. He is a sole practitioner, so a very small firm.

It will involve me using digital transcription equipment at home, so I will need a laptop/PC, pedals etc. And I would also like to look into the possibility of having the phones diverted to my line at home.

I have found it quite difficult to find more information and advice as to how to go about organising this set up before a load of money is spent.

I will get our computer guy involved, but that is after my research is done. I have compiled a list of cons and ways around then and questions and research I need to do, but just wondered if anyone knew of any website I could take a look at. Most sites about working from home look like scams stuffing envelopes and such like.

fwor

pollyanna24 wrote: »

I posted on this subject a week or so, but can't for the life of me find the thread (so any tips on that would be great ).

All you need to do is click on your username at the start of your post, then choose "Find More Posts by pollyanna24" and you will find your original thread. FWIW, here's my reply from that thread:

"It's definitely viable - plenty of people do that and much more complex things working from home. In some respects you are spoiled for choice, as there are numerous ways to do what you want to.

However, one question that will probably need to be answered before going any further: what is your employer's view of security and confidentiality?

This will probably cause you to consider something like a Virtual Private Network, rather than just buying a digital voice recorder and emailing files across the net, though even here there are quite a few alternatives that could be made reasonably secure. "

pollyanna24

Thanks for that.

His view is that he would like it to be secure. He is a sports/media/entertainment lawyer, so although I would have a password on my computer at home to stop busybodies having a look, I guess we would need something extra.

Something else to put on my list of questions for IT man.

fwor

I guessed security/confidentiality would be a concern.

How it gets done will probably mainly be determined by what your IT man is familiar and comfortable with.

In that situation - assuming there is no complex computer setup in the office and he just uses a stand-alone PC - I'd be looking at a VPN to provide a secure link to the office, and simple file sharing between his PC and yours, so that he can give you access to a specific folder on his PC only. As before, there are plenty of others ways that would be viable too.

Same for the phones - at the simplest, just having a call forwarding facility from you phone provider that you can turn on and off, or if you want to get more complex and more functional, an Asterisk-based PC voice switch that transfers calls to your home via VOIP. There are no doubt a few other options with varying levels of complexity.

pollyanna24

Thank you very much, definitely food for thought.

We have three computers in the office and they are networked so that I can access my files on all of them with an external hard drive sitting next to the fax machine. This was set up mainly in case something happened to my computer, not because we really need all the information on the other computers. Does this affect being able to access my computer?

Will he be able to use my computer if I am logged on at home?

Re the phone lines. I wasn't sure if it was a simple thing or not. Wondered if people weren't allowed to do it for a reason like, our office is 020 7, but my home line isn't, and if people were allowed to divert phones easily, it would be a way of making people think your business was in Central London when in actual fact it isn't... does that make sense?

fwor

You can probably tell from the lack of 1-line answers here that this is not a simple subject!

It sounds as though the external drive is a NAS device, and you could simply choose to continue to use this as the place where you store data that you share - the VPN would simply extend the existing office network out to your home.

If that's correct, there would be no need for your boss to be able to access your computer - though you could set that up via Windows file sharing if you wanted to.

I don't think there is any restriction on diverting phones - you could divert it overseas if you wanted to, or to a mobile. But of course his company would be paying the cost of the second "leg" of the diverted call. That (much lower cost) is one reason why you should consider using VOIP for the call from office to your home.