Working from home has gone from an unusual perk to an established way of running a business. For entrepreneurs, it can mean lower overheads and the freedom to build a company without expensive premises. For established businesses, remote working can open up a much larger recruitment pool and give employees greater flexibility over where they live and work.
But there is a difference between letting people work from home and building a successful work from home business. A remote company still needs structure, accountability and a strong culture – arguably more so when employees aren’t sitting together every day. Technology makes remote working possible, but software alone won’t make a business productive.
The good news is…we’ve seen it first hand, because BusinessesForSale.com has been a fully remote company for many years now. Today, our roughly 50 members of staff are spread across the UK and countries including Mexico, Poland, India, South Africa, the United States and Spain.
In this article, we’re going to explore some of the lessons we’ve learned during those years, and help you build the perfect work from home business. So get comfy in your pyjamas and grab a cup of coffee – it’s time to jump into the Teams call.
What Makes a Successful Work From Home Business?
Some businesses lend themselves to home working more easily than others. BusinessesForSale.com is a web-based publishing company, so much of what our teams do involves writing, coding, designing, selling, marketing and developing products. None of those activities necessarily requires everyone to be in the same building.
The same applies to many consultancies, agencies, online businesses and professional services companies. If most of the value a business creates comes from people’s knowledge and skills rather than a physical location, restricting recruitment to people within commuting distance of an office can become an unnecessary limitation.
For us, removing that restriction has been one of the biggest advantages of remote working. We can recruit someone because they are right for a role rather than because they happen to live near London. It has also given existing employees more flexibility if their circumstances change or they decide to move elsewhere.
Flexibility still needs structure, though. Employees need to understand what they are responsible for, how their work contributes to wider objectives and what they are expected to deliver. In an office, it is easy to confuse visibility with productivity. Someone arriving early and leaving late is highly visible, but that doesn’t necessarily tell you much about the quality of their work.
Remote working forces businesses to think more carefully about outcomes. At BusinessesForSale.com, we use a mixture of regular company and departmental meetings to keep people aligned, while avoiding the temptation to fill every available hour with video calls.
Most employees won’t have more than two or three video meetings in a day, and sometimes they will have none. That balance matters. People need enough communication to know what is happening, but they also need uninterrupted time to actually do the work.
How Do You Build a Remote Company Culture?
Company culture is probably one of the hardest parts of remote working to get right. When everyone worked together in our London office, useful communication happened without anybody planning it. People exchanged ideas while making coffee, spoke to colleagues from other departments and solved problems through conversations that would never have appeared in a calendar.
When we became more remote, many of those spontaneous interactions disappeared. We realised that preserving them meant becoming more deliberate about creating opportunities for people to talk. The answer wasn’t simply to schedule endless meetings, but to think more carefully about how those meetings and informal conversations worked.
The person leading a group call plays an important role. A good meeting should make it easy for people to contribute, question an idea or admit that something isn’t working. We’ve also found that remote meetings can sometimes give quieter members of staff more opportunity to contribute than they might have had in a large face-to-face discussion.
Our physical office still has a role. UK employees can come into our London office, with Wednesday traditionally being the day when more people choose to be there. It is deliberately social as well as practical, and colleagues from overseas occasionally come over too.
That doesn’t mean every remote business needs an office. A completely home-based company might use team days, coworking sessions or occasional social events instead. The important thing is to identify the human interactions that matter and make sure they don’t disappear simply because people aren’t sharing a workplace.
Hiring and Onboarding Remote Employees
For a smaller business competing with larger employers, access to the wider talent pool that comes with remote working can be a considerable advantage.
International recruitment does introduce considerations around employment law, payroll and tax, so businesses need appropriate professional advice before employing people in other jurisdictions.
The bigger challenge can be what happens after someone joins. In an office, a new employee absorbs a surprising amount of information simply by being there. They can ask a quick question, overhear conversations and gradually understand the priorities and unwritten rules of the company. That doesn’t happen automatically when someone starts a job from home.
Remote onboarding therefore needs to be deliberate. Where practical, we encourage new UK employees to spend time in the office during their first few weeks, with close colleagues encouraged to join them. When someone lives abroad, their induction needs regular contact and social interaction as well as training on the practical parts of the job.
The aim isn’t to supervise people indefinitely. It’s to give new employees enough context and support at the beginning that they can become confident and independent later.
What Technology Does a Remote Business Need?
A remote business needs technology that covers a few essential jobs: communication, file sharing, customer relationship management, customer service and tracking company goals. The exact combination will depend on the business, but these systems need to work together well enough that employees can find the information they need without being in the same building.
At BusinessesForSale.com, Microsoft Teams sits at the centre of much of our remote working. We use it for video calls, messaging and sharing company information, and our telephone systems are integrated with Teams so calls can be handled across different locations. Pipedrive is our CRM, giving our sales teams visibility over leads, activity and goals, while Zendesk provides the ticketing system we use to manage customer service.
Informal communication has a place too. We have used company WhatsApp groups for announcements and celebrating sales successes. The sales bell that once rang across the office has effectively been replaced by memes and GIFs – a small example of how familiar parts of company culture can evolve rather than simply disappear.
How to Start Your Own Work From Home Business
If you’re starting a business rather than converting an existing one, you can design home working into it from the beginning. Many work from home business ideas require relatively little physical infrastructure, particularly businesses based around consulting, marketing, design, software development and other online or professional services.
Start with the business itself rather than the lifestyle. You still need a product or service customers will pay for, a realistic way of reaching those customers and a clear understanding of your costs. Once those fundamentals are in place, consider what you genuinely need to operate from home, from a suitable workspace and reliable internet connection to specialist equipment or stock.
There are practical and legal considerations too. Depending on the business, you may need to check your mortgage or tenancy agreement, speak to your home insurer and consider whether planning restrictions apply. Businesses receiving customers at home, employing staff or storing significant amounts of stock may face additional requirements.
Starting from scratch isn’t the only route. Buying an established online or home-based business can provide an existing customer base, trading history and operating model from day one. For someone specifically looking for the flexibility of remote entrepreneurship, exploring an online business for sale can therefore be worthwhile alongside developing a new idea.
What We’ve Learned From Working Remotely
The biggest lesson from our experience is that there isn’t a single perfect model. Some employees prefer working almost entirely from home, while others, including me, choose to spend much more time in the office. Our colleagues are spread across different countries and time zones, but we can still bring people together when there is a reason to do so.
What makes that flexibility possible is structure. People need clear goals, access to the right information and enough contact with colleagues to feel part of the same business. They also need the freedom to get on with their work without proving that they’re productive by being permanently visible.
Technology has made it possible to build a company whose employees could be almost anywhere. The harder part is building the trust, communication and culture that allow that company to function effectively. Get those foundations right and working from home becomes more than an employee perk – it can become a genuine advantage for the business.
FAQs
How Do I Start My Own Work From Home Business?
Start with a product or service people will pay for and make sure it can realistically be delivered from home. Then consider your costs, customers, workspace, tax, insurance and any licences or permissions you may need.
Do I Need Business Insurance if I Work From Home?
You may do, as standard home insurance doesn’t always cover business equipment, stock or activities. Check with your insurer and consider whether you need additional business cover.
What Businesses Can I Run From Home?
Many online and service businesses can be run from home, including consulting, marketing, design, software development and ecommerce. The best options are generally businesses that don’t depend on specialist premises or regular face-to-face customer visits.