Working from home well is not complicated, but a few small decisions make the difference between a productive day and a frustrating one. Here is what actually matters, in rough order of how much it affects your day.

What you actually need

1. A decent internet connection. Most home connections are fine for email, files and video calls. What causes trouble is a very old plan, a modem the provider supplied years ago, or everyone in the house streaming at once. If your calls break up in the afternoon and evening but are fine at 9am, that is congestion at home, not a fault at work.
2. The right way in. Depending on how your business is set up, this might be a VPN (a private tunnel to your office network), a remote desktop session, or nothing at all because your files and email live in the cloud. Use whatever we set up for you, and use it the same way every time. Do not go looking for your own workaround, because that is how people end up with files in places nobody can back up.
3. A second screen. Cheap, and the single biggest improvement most people make. Working from a laptop screen alone means constant window shuffling. Any monitor with the right cable will do.
4. A proper headset. Laptop microphones pick up the room, the dog and the dishwasher. A wired USB headset costs little, never needs charging and will make you sound better than anyone else on the call. If you take a lot of calls, this matters more than the computer.
5. A raised laptop and a separate keyboard and mouse, if you are at it all day. A stack of books works.

Where to save your work

Save to the place your business already uses: SharePoint, OneDrive, a synced work folder, or the office file server through your remote connection. Do not save to the desktop or the Documents folder of a home computer.

The reason is simple. Anything sitting on a home machine is not backed up, is not searchable by anyone else, and disappears if that computer dies or the person using it leaves. It also means the only copy of something the business needs is in a house we cannot support. If you are not sure where your files are meant to go, ask us before you build a habit.

Keeping it secure without making it painful

• No shared family logins. Your work account is yours. Sharing it with a partner or a teenager breaks the record of who did what, and it is the single fastest way for a work account to end up compromised.
• Keep work off the family computer where you can. A work laptop is far better. If you genuinely have to use a home machine, at least use a separate Windows or Mac user account that only you log into, and never let anyone else use it.
• Lock the screen when you walk away. Windows key and L on a PC, Control Command Q on a Mac. It takes a second and it is a good habit for the office too.
• Expect the extra login prompt. Multi-factor authentication, a second check when you sign in, will ask more often from home than from the office. That is the system working, not a fault.
• Keep your home Wi-Fi password to yourself and change it if it has been handed around to tradespeople and visitors over the years.

Setting up for the first time

Tell us what you need to reach from home and we will set up the access properly, including anything that has to be approved on the office side. Getting this done during business hours before your first day at home is much less stressful than trying to sort it out at 7am with a deadline.

Still stuck?

Log a ticket at portal.yougrowit.com.au or email support@yougrowit.com.au. If it is stopping you working right now, call 03 9028 4358.

Support hours are Monday to Friday, 8:30am to 5:30pm Melbourne time, excluding Victorian public holidays.