With changing times and current events in New Zealand, many businesses are now requiring people to do office work from home.  The reasons for this differ from one situation to the other.  In some cases, like Christchurch, access to the office may not be an option due to the earthquakes.  For others, it might be a lifestyle choice through to working from home while raising children.  Whatever the case you could find yourself working from home.

Working from home comes with many challenges, trust me, I did it for about 8 years.  While you may be able to get your head around how to get the work done, you will struggle with not being as close to a team as you may have been accustomed to.  However, that sense of team is still important.

With my job, I work in an office, but if my employer was requiring people to do office work from home, this would be an option for me.  At the office I am use to being a part of multiple teams with some of them spread around different parts of the world.  It is great being about to use social media tools to ask a question and then have multiple people participate in providing the answer.  No, I am not shouting out to all of the world on Facebook and Twitter, but I am using similar tools which IBM has built for business purposes to enable teams to work effectively together.

I make use of a couple of tools.  One being LotusLive and the other being IBM Connections.  Let me tell you a little bit about how I use these tools.

IBM Connections

This tool is a complete suite of social media tools such as Blogs, Wiki’s and Status Updates.  Right away, a lot of people would probably switch off at this point wondering how these things could help them work from home.  However, through the use of these social tools you are able to stay in touch with what is happening with the rest of the team and you can also use it to let others know what you are doing, or having difficulty with as the case may be.

Typically, the use of these tools makes people a lot more productive and in many cases projects can be delivered in a lot less time because of effective communication.  If you are feed-up with email cluttering your in-box, this is a great way to use alternative ways to communicate.

LotusLive

This is a cloud based service which provides me with services which are similar to IBM Connections, however, there are also some other features which allow me to conduct online presentations.  Rather than having to visit the office to do a PowerPoint presentation, I can present it online to anyone no matter where in the world they may be at the time.

I recommend giving these tools a go as you can do so for free in a some cases.  LotusLive allows for a free 30 day trial, while IBM Connections is a bit more involved and requires businesses to have a server or hire a virtual server to install it on.  IBM Connections would require working with a company who knows what they are doing, however, I have about 4 or 5 that I could recommend if anyone is interested.