The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's main concerns about home offices are safety and security. The agency provides a list of 19 safety items that its teleworking employees must certify.
Here are a few examples:
Choose office chairs that provide good supporting backrests and allow adjustments to fit you comfortably.
Install sufficient lighting in locations to reduce glare on the work surface.
Inspect and repair carpeting with frayed edges or loose seams. Avoid using throw rugs that can cause tripping hazards in your work space.
Always keep government files and information in a secure place and do not advertise your home office to strangers.
— Judy Welles
Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:30 p.m. Feb. 20, 2008. Please go to Corrections & Clarifications to see what has changed.
Home offices — those rooms, nooks and spaces in houses and apartments where people do their work — are becoming commonplace. That’s true for many workers in private industry.
And as teleworking takes hold in government, it’s also becoming the case for federal workers.
According to the American Home Furnishings Alliance, seven in 10 Americans now have offices or designated workstations in their homes, a 112 percent increase since 2000.
How do federal teleworkers set up their home offices and handle working from home? The key to working at a home office, federal teleworkers say, is to establish a routine.
Mike Simitoski, a patent examiner who has worked for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for five years, has been teleworking from his home office four days a week for the past year. He makes a point of working the same hours at home as at the office.
Simitoski described his routine: “First thing I do is turn the computer on, start coffee and have breakfast. I’m up before six every morning, and I get to the ‘office’ about 6:10 a.m. I usually check e-mail and phone messages in my pajamas, and I get working about 7 a.m.”
Simitoski lives outside Fredericksburg, Va., a location he chose when he learned that USPTO might offer patent examiners a telework option. He is about 50 miles from USPTO’s Alexandria, Va., office — a 50-minute commute during nonrush hours, when he normally traveled.
Simitoski picked one of the bedrooms of his four-bedroom house to be his office and bought new, modular-type office furniture from a large office-supply store. “It looks like wood, but I can actually afford it,” he said. The primary piece is a U-shaped desk that takes up much of the room, giving Simitoski space to lay out his papers and put his computer, two large-screen monitors and a printer. He also erected book shelves and set up files in the closet.
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
