By moving from my home, I was far away from distractions. I was able to structure my day with out the tempting creature comforts of my house. Just as importantly for the first time ever I was able to lock the office door behind me and switch off at the end of a day. Rest and recreation time are important ingredients to a successful life.

It is nice to hear colleagues valuing the team spirit. This is one part of UKFast I will never change.

Recently as part of our Investors in people accreditation, we had an independent assessor interview 16 staff at UKFast. I was warned that morning before he started, that employers don’t always like the results, so I was rather nervous waiting for the outcome. At the end of the day I sat down in the boardroom with the examiner and he told me something that I will never forget.

‘in assessing over 200 companies in the last 17 years I have only ever witnessed the same sort of energy in one other company; they grew from 40 staff in 1999 to over 1000 by 2002.’

Now I am not planning the same sort of unprecedented growth, however I know that our success is down to the energy he spotted. That energy could not be emulated in any other conditions other than us all working together, as a team under one roof.

My day working from home would generally involve switching on the laptop the second I rolled out of bed, throwing out a couple of emails to the MD so he would know I was working, whilst tuning into Aerobics Oz Style and Trisha.

I can honestly say that I don’t know anyone who works from who doesn’t do the exact same thing. From my experience, anyone who claims they don’t wear their dressing gown all day when working from home is a liar.

Eventually, we come to my point. How can anyone function in an efficient, business like manner when they are wearing a blue towelling dress gown with the hood up, monster feet slippers and watching girls in leotards bend and stretch?

So why not? well personally, I prefer coming into the office to work, a bit of gossip is always good as well as discussing the latest developments in "24". By the time we get to work we’re.. well most of us are.. wide awake and in a pretty reasonable state, ready to go. Its also good to be in the same room as someone when helping out or explaining the next project. Often its quite tricky to put across the idea in your head for someone else to build, so you have to draw diagrams or scribble stuff down as an aid, although pick up the diagrams from last weeks explanation and you wonder what on earth you were talking about!

Being in the office you also get to hear the latest moaning… I mean positive feedback on the latest updates you made to the technical support application and fix and improve continuously. Without the interaction the system would never evolve. You can also keep an eye on the lads and tell them to stop writing immensely long blog posts and get on with some "real" work

So I’ll put up with the ever increasing variety of odd smells emanating from the microwave at lunchtime, its better than sitting at home with no one to talk to directly without having to use some kind of technology.

I would happily work from home, surrounded and cushioned by my Email, Mobile and Instant Messenger happily in the knowledge that all I need to to to reach someone is to press a few buttons, but then just as I check my inbox I still see that it isn’t showing any unread emails? WHY NOT? i sent the email at least 3 minutes ago, it only had one sentence and he should have read and replied by now! So my frustration begins to grow, another 30 seconds go by and I pick up my mobile and send a text; ‘Did you get the email I just sent?’

Now I am getting really worried, it has been a whole 5 minutes now and still no reply so I phone him. When he answers the phone he explains to me that he has just stepped away from his computer and got distracted by some show on ITV where a group of middle aged women debate several humerous anecdotes on the subject of ‘What my Husband Did the Previous Night’.

Oh how I wish I could be back in the office again, where I can just swivle around on my chair and ask John if he has finally updated that setting on some server so my up to now, useless scripts, will start showing their true magic…