Working from Home in Sport Management

Working from home is an increasingly common phenomenom across many industries, including the Sports Industry. There a number of reasons for this:

The cost of employing someone is usually less if they work from home as this strategy reduces the cost of providing an office
Technological advancement (e.g. Skype) makes it possible to communicate cheaply and easily with work colleagues, wherever they are in the world
There is little disadvantage to the organisation if employees work from home particularly if the organisation is a national or state sport body.
Employees tend to work above and beyond the normal number of working hours when they work from home.

Home office essentials

Broadband

If you are interested in working from home in an administration or management capacity, it is essential that you have fast and reliable broadband. Hopefuly you have access to broadband via fibre optic cable but ADSL or Wireless broadband would suffice provided you do not suffer dropouts frequently.

Computer Backup Hardware

One of the mosts essential aspects of your computer system is that you will need consideable hard drive storage capacity. Ideally your main computer should have two identical hard drives and some quality backup software. The second hard drive is purely for backing up. The backup software should be set to backup your complete computer system onto your second hard drive. This precaution is vitally important in a business setting. The second hard drive can be an external hard drive but in reality your backup procedure needs to be automatic i.e it is scheduled to occur with a specific frequency. Human nature being what it is, there are great risks if backing up is not automatic.

Database software

Sport administrators, on any level, need to have some proficiency in using database software whether it is the desktop, server or web-enabled variety. It is not so much that the sports administrator needs to be able to build the database but more especially they will need some understanding of how to add and edit data, and create queries. This is not a difficult proposition for most people. The use of databases is profoundly important because of the need to communicate with large numbers of people. A database can be mail-merged with documents (e.g. Microsoft Word) or email software (e.g. Microsoft Outlook) to rapidly create individually address letters and emails. The database software Microsoft Access is likely used by the majority of smaller sport organisations for membership databases. However larger organisations will tend towards a web based database that enables multiple people in multiple locations to be able to add, amend or use data.

Office equipment

You will like need a range of other business equipment in your home office:

Printer - Black and White laser
Printer - Colour laser
Binding machine
Laminating machine
Paper cutting machine
Paper shredder
Scanner/fax machine or multifunction printer