Keeping your home business running when you have a baby might seem extremely difficult, but there are several tips you can use to ensure that you maintain a high level of productivity while also taking care of your infant’s needs. In fact, many of these tips can even be applied to situations that force you to work outside of your home.
Five Productivity Tips for Working in a Small Business with a New Baby
1. Utilize a Play Yard – One of the best ways to keep your child happy and safe while you get some work done is to give them a high quality play yard to use. After all, play yards are designed to keep an infant mentally engaged, and they are also soft enough to double as a great place to take a nap. As an added bonus, you can easily incorporate a baby play yard into a small home office so that you can keep an eye on your baby while you work.
2. Create a Flexible Schedule – If you are your own boss, it will be much easier to put a flex schedule in place. However, even if you work for someone else, you should still consider asking for a flex schedule. This will enable you to take care of all of your baby’s needs while still putting in a standard 40 hour work week.
3. Alternate Shifts with Your Significant Other – Many parents opt to avoid daycare and a babysitter in lieu of having someone with the baby all the time. Unfortunately, this can become complicated if you both work. Instead of giving up on this goal, you should structure your work day to accommodate it. In other words, if your significant other is gone from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm each day, you could plan to start your work day at 5:00 pm. Although this might not be ideal, it will make it easier to work without dealing with a lot of interruptions.
4. Take Frequent Breaks – Instead of plowing through an eight-hour work day, you can stretch your shifts by a few hours in order to make it easier to take frequent breaks to attend to your baby’s needs. You can also read emails and other work related documents out loud in a soothing voice to make your baby feel like they are getting story time throughout the day.
5. Keep Your Calendar Updated – Everyone in the business world needs to have a firm grasp on all of their appointments, but this becomes even more imperative when you add a baby into the mix. After all, you will need to juggle conference calls with doctor appointments, and this will be very difficult if you do not keep your calendar updated and with you at all times.
Working with your baby nearby will require you to make a larger time commitment in order to take care of everything, but it will also let you avoid putting your infant in daycare. Therefore, many people who own a small business choose to work from home so that they can run their company without missing the opportunity to hear their baby’s first word.
About the Author: Bethany Gillis is a mom who knows firsthand the difficulties of juggling both work and a baby. If it weren’t for the comfort and convenience of her own baby play yard, her job as a working mother would have been even more difficult. She offers these tips in hopes of helping working parents achieve their potential productivity, even while caring for their babies.