For many female employees and entrepreneurs, getting married and starting a family entails putting your career on the back burner. Although we’ve made significant strides towards equality in the workplace, there’s nothing like the benefits that working from home brings working parents.
So, the remote work setup has changed not just the way we do business, but also how much more inclusive the current workplace is.
Although no work setup is perfect, WFH is definitely ideal for entrepreneurs trying to balance the demands of business and family. Here are six reasons why:
More Time With The Kids
Parents often feel guilty leaving their kids behind when they have to report to work. Sometimes, a busy schedule can also make them miss out on important occasions like birthdays, school plays, recitals, or championship games.
When you work from home, you’ll have more wiggle room. First of all, your kids will only be a few steps away. Secondly, the flexible schedules that come with a WFH set-up mean that you can work when you need to – so you can attend your kid’s recital and just make up for it at work later in the day.
Increase Your Income
Being an entrepreneur requires you to minimise your expenses so you can focus on building your business. Working from home helps you save money – and time. No need to spend on office space rent and commuting, after all.
You can then use your extra time – and money- to develop other businesses or sidelines such as consulting services, online shops, and even digital products. Done right, you can end up scaling your businesses faster.
No More Stressful Commutes
Working parents and entrepreneurs with kids have enough stress to deal with every day. Getting rid of a stressful commute means one less thing for you to worry about.
Apart from the time this frees up, eliminating additional stressors like heavy traffic and encountering rude commuters or drivers also helps you become a better parent.
How? Happier, more relaxed people (who don’t have to go through a stressful commute every day) have more patience and good will towards their kids.
Flexible Work Hours
One of the undeniable benefits of WFH is its flexibility. As a working-parent-slash-entrepreneur, you have increased control over your schedule. You can schedule meetings and work on projects whenever it’s convenient.
For example, if you’re most creative at dawn, you can start your day as early as four or even five in the morning. It’s even more advantageous if your remote teams are based in countries that are 3-4 hours ahead. *wink* *wink*
This way, you can get a lot of stuff done – long before everyone else in the family is up.
Save Money on Childcare Costs
Instead of hiring full-time childcare, you can opt for a part-time nanny instead. Depending on your workload, you can allocate time for taking care of your younger kids.
You can even alter the schedule of your childcare provider depending on your monthly goals. For example, let’s say you’ll have your hands full at year-end preparing annual reports and evaluations. You can anticipate this by hiring full-time childcare for this period – and using your childcare savings from the rest of the year to cover the extra costs.
Better Sense of Control
As an entrepreneur, work matters and family life can both feel all-consuming. It’s all too easy to feel overwhelmed.
However, working from home enables you to strike a better balance. The flexibility and the lack of a need to rush to the office (or back home from the office) is in your favour. Furthermore, the set-up allows you to put certain things aside, be they work or family-related, for whatever is most urgent without much trouble.
WFH provides both employees and entrepreneurs with a lot of benefits. It’s also becoming clearer that this set-up helps many working parents keep their careers, particularly because there’s no need to choose between work and family. Now, more than ever, you can perhaps enjoy and thrive at both.
Remote Staff has been assisting Australian SMEs and entrepreneurs with hiring remote workers from the Philippines for the last 14 years and counting. Whether you’re looking for your first virtual assistant or have decided to hire an entire distributed team (so you can spend more time with your kids), we got you covered.
Call us today or schedule a call back and let’s get started.
Serena has been working remotely and writing content for the better part of the last decade. To date, she's written for Pepper.ph and Mabuhay Magazine, among others, and has churned out more than a thousand articles on everything from The Basics of Stock Market Investing to How to Make Milk Tea-Flavored Taho at home.
