Sky News Business : ‘Giganomics: How To Rock Working From Home’

Our latest Sky News Business feature:

"The work place landscape is rapidly changing. People constantly ask us what it's like to work from home. How do you keep yourself motivated? What's it like working and living together?

The whole 'working from home for yourself' is not that alien to us anymore - the overheads are low and hopefully will keep us in good stead to get through the recession.

But the biggest challenge is to keep diversifying and transferring skills from one job or sector of the company to new sources of business. The world of 'giganomics' is well and truly here.

The term giganomic was coined by the former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, Tina Brown.

"No one I know has a job anymore," she says. "They've got gigs: a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies and bits and pieces they try to stitch together."

The era of a job for life has arrived, and the business professional now relies on a series of "gigs", some regular, some not.
The advantage of a being a giganomic is that by working for a variety of employers and organisations, no one has complete power over you.

The drawback is an immensely complicated diary. Another downside is the burden of all the anxieties, uncertainties, cash-flow and indignities of 'gig work'. Invariably you end up working four times harder than a salaried employee, without the benefits of holiday or sick pay.

So if you're thinking 'I can do that', be prepared to excel at time management. And grow some thick-skin - freelancers who work from home are prone to paranoia when their emails go unanswered or their calls remain unreturned for days.
The upside is the freedom to pick and choose work, and to do it at a time that suits.

Read the full feature on the Sky News Business pages here