How bringing your work home could be the answer to juggling a hectic lifestyle

Forget trying to juggle home life, childcare arrangements and the demands of the office. Forget sitting in traffic jams for hours each day as you commute to your workplace. Instead, focus on the growing trend to work from home.

Already hugely popular in the USA and across Europe, it's an approach which suits both employer and employee and is currently enjoyed by thousands of Irish workers who have adapted their working arrangements to marry the needs of home and office.

Home-workers, as they are referred to, are on the increase. These days, it's possible to work entirely from home without ever having to go into the office, as the desire to have a life as well as a job becomes the driving force for many Irish workers.

Interestingly, the first problem associated with home-working is that of creating a physical work space within the home.

For those lucky enough to have them, detached and semidetached homes tend to be best, since you have the possibility of an extension or the conversion of a garage into a working room. Small flats and townhouses are the least suitable locations for home-based work, as there is usually no potential for expansion.

Interior designer Colette Ward, who runs a company called Absolute Interiors, has recently made the move from office to home, and was fortunate in that she had the space to accommodate her new work area. Up to last September she had leased a showroom in Stillorgan and commuted each day to her office. "Normally I would have left at 7.30 a.m. in order to beat the traffic, which in peak time could take the bones of an hour. The advantage now is that the time I spent commuting each day, I can spend working instead," she says.

Making the decision to work from home has made life a lot easier for Ward. "If you're in an office, you're removed from what's going on at home, whereas when you're at home, you can keep an eye on everything and don't have to constantly make childcare arrangements when the unexpected crops up."

Another reason for the move was that she found her clients didn't need a showroom, preferring a home visit, so an expensive lease didn't make financial sense. Ward finds that she probably works more hours than before. For example, if she needs to take time out for one of her children during the day, she can make it up in the evenings.

An important aspect of making the transition between the two workplaces is the fact that she had to work out of the home to appreciate moving back there. "When you're out of the home you're gone in the morning and you're not back until 6 p.m., at which stage you're racing to get a dinner ready. You're running the whole time."

She advises anyone who plans to work from home to keep their work area totally separate from the rest of the household. Another suggestion is to have designated phonelines for your work so that children aren't able to pick up the phone.

The changeover from office to home can be disruptive, she warns. "It took about eight weeks to organise everything at home, during which time I had swatches of material all over the place which was very difficult."

Her professional skills came in handy when it came to decorating her own office. Using soft neutral materials and colours and stripped timber flooring, she created a space which she finds relaxing and conducive to her line of work.

"I suppose the only negative thing about home-working is the isolation." To overcome this Ward attends a networking meeting every Thursday morning at 6.45 am where local business people get together and generate new business.

With more and more people now working from home she finds that attitudes have improved. "Before, if you were working from home, people thought you weren't serious - you were playing at being in business. But that's not the perception anymore."

Sean O'Siochru is a consultant with Nexus Research, a co-operative based in Dublin's city centre. "I gave up my desk in the office eight years ago, or I found it had disappeared," he laughs. The transition from old work practices to his present flexible arrangement was relatively easy and now he rarely goes into the office.

The number one benefit for O'Siochru is the time saved on commuting, but he also now feels a lot more in control of his work time. Home-working started out of a desire to be near his children. "I don't need the social contact that others need around work, but I like to have the family contact."

An essential element in the success of working from home is to have a dedicated work space, an area that's used for no other purpose except work.

That was "a primary consideration when choosing our last two homes, that there would be a suitable area, a dedicated room for my work," he says.

The one bad thing O'Siochru feels about working from home is the change from work to home life. "It's very instant, I finish at 5.30 p.m. and then go straight in and cook dinner or look after the kids, so there's no cooling off period. That's the only real drawback - not having a private moment to clear the work out of my head." Far from being a passing phase, the trend for home-working continues in the market place according to Simon Ensor, a director of Sherry FitzGerald, who believes that the trend to work from home is now an established one which will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

"Certainly there is more of a requirement for a third reception room when people are viewing a property," says Ensor. "Viewers are now looking for an office space whereas traditionally a spare reception room would be a dedicated playroom.

"You find, especially in the upmarket new homes, that they now have rooms specifically built which cater for an office set-up, with extra cabling and wiring as a prerequisite."

The building industry may respond by designing more and more homes that can accommodate home-based economic activity.