Not so long ago, working from home was something only a handful of lucky people could do. But in today’s cloud-based digital environment, that’s no longer the case. Working remotely is easier than ever in our constantly connected world. With endless work from home job opportunities, allowing us to log in and stay productive online, virtually anyone can start a career from their kitchen table.
You could take your chances as a dedicated freelancer, find a new job working remotely for a company, or pick up some part time projects alongside a more traditional job. So, if you are thinking about making the jump, forget the office and set about finding your perfect at home job. Here is RingCentral’s guide to the best jobs to do while working from home.
Traditional office jobs with work from home options
There are lots of jobs which were once considered to be office-only, but now offer reliable working from home options right here in the UK. With working from home technologies such as RingCentral’s Remote Support, you can now be part of an effective work-from-home team with all the communications technology you need to collaborate – wherever you are in the world.
Here are a few traditional office jobs which you can now do from home.
Inbound customer service
You don’t need to commute to a bustling call centre to support customers anymore. Customer service assistants now have the option to work at home thanks to cloud-based platforms and UCaaS tools like team messaging and video communications. Your business can give you a dedicated number that you can answer from your home office, with calls directed by AI and skills-based routing, making sure you are the best agent to handle the call efficiently and effectively.
Social media and web chat assistance
As well as inbound calls, customer service agents can be responsible for handling live web chat and inbound social media too. If you are managing web chats while working from home, our digital engagement platform gives you a presence across most social sites and digital tools, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It also aggregates messages from all digital channels together, making it easier to respond – whatever channel you are on.
Sales and outbound customer service
Similar to being an inbound customer service representative, there are plenty of home opportunities in generating sales and providing an outbound call service for companies online. This might involve cold-calling potential customers and presenting demonstrations to clients online through video conferencing tools and chat.
You’ll need to know how to persuade people to be effective in this job, and it’s also worth having plenty of experience talking to people before considering a sales job online. However, RingCentral’s outbound customer service tools can help, providing you with an outbound auto dialler and even sales campaign managers.
Financial accounting
Accountancy is becoming a particularly popular field for those who prefer to work from home. With so much communications technology available for things like sorting through expense reports and calculating income, there’s no need for a physical office anymore as long as you have a laptop or smartphone. You can even host meetings with your clients over the web.
Paralegal
Paralegals offer support to attorneys, lawyers and solicitors. As a paralegal, you can offer your services online and provide plenty of guidance, all from your home office. In today’s busy landscape, people don’t always have time to arrange an appointment with a lawyer in person. So going online offers a fast, reliable way to get legal advice.
Consultancy
If you’re a consultant, you sell your knowledge on a specific topic to people all around the world, whether it’s TikTok marketing or Pay Per Click advertising. Companies often work with freelance consultants to make sure that they have the right strategy in place for business growth. Consultancy is especially great if you’re looking to move from something full-time to part-time work with a flexible schedule – all from home.
Virtual assistant
With a multitude of tools for collaboration and communication available online, it’s easy to build a career as a virtual assistant (VA). As a VA you perform clerical and administrative tasks on behalf of the people you work for. This could mean scheduling meetings, dealing with phone calls, typing up reports, and sending emails. VAs often also help with social media management, such as scheduling tweets and Facebook posts.
If you’re excellent at organisation, this could be a great job for you. The role often comes with a competitive salary – and since you’re remote, you may be able to secure a London-level wage whilst living in a significantly cheaper part of the country.
Work from home data entry jobs
Data entry is one of the older jobs in the digital world, but it’s been given a new lease of life thanks to the rise in remote working. Since robots can’t always transfer information from PDFs and scanned photos, companies still need human intelligence. Therefore there are lots of opportunities for work from home jobs in the UK doing data entry.
Data entry is a pretty simple home based job but it can generate a nice income if you’re good with accuracy. Some of the best legitimate data entry jobs include transcription, payroll officers, data collection and analysis, and underwriting.
Just avoid online data entry work from home jobs that mention ‘paid surveys’ as these aren’t salaried positions. Since you might be dealing with personal data, it’s also worth familiarising yourself with the United Kingdom’s GDPR policies.
Work from home content and social media jobs
The rise of social media has opened up a whole new field of great paying jobs you can do from the comfort of your own home. Here are a few examples.
Social media influencer
Social media influencers are one of the most valuable tools in a brand’s marketing arsenal these days. Customers are becoming less likely to trust big-name companies, and more likely to listen to people who they feel an affinity with. As an influencer, you’ll need to build a dedicated following of potential customers on social media. When brands see that you can influence the customer base that they need, they’ll pay you for your help. Influencers typically work across most social media platforms, and often have their own blogs or YouTube accounts.
Content marketing
If you love writing, creating podcasts, or producing video, then you could have what it takes to be a content marketer. To do this job, you will need to know how to leverage content to support the growth of a company’s brand and generate potential sales. You can work flexible hours writing blogs and eBooks that help your clients capture attention online. Some content marketers also write social media and website copy – or make short films and provide photography to market a brand.
Social media manager
If you know your way around the Facebook and Instagram algorithms, and you know how to get people’s attention online, you can probably find a work from home job as a social media manager. There are countless companies out there that need help managing their social media accounts, particularly small businesses that may not have the support of large internal teams. Some might even want you to build a social strategy from scratch for their brand.
Product reviewing
Social proof is crucial to gaining customers these days. Before you buy something online, there’s a good chance that you’ll read reviews from other customers for an insight on what to expect. These reviews are so important that some companies even pay people to write them. A company might send you a product every week so you can write detailed reviews on how it works.
You need a blog or a YouTube channel in order to post reviews of the products. But it is more effective to have both, as well as active social media accounts. If there is a good user community on the seller’s website, you can also post your reviews directly on the website.
Graphic designer
If you’re a creative person with technical skills then you’ll thrive as a work from home graphic designer. These professionals can find gigs all over the web for things like logo and website design, social media graphics, print adverts, and even illustrating book covers. There are tons of opportunities out there, plus you can create your own website or portfolio to boost your chances of finding more clients.
Script writer
If you love movies, television shows, or the content that you find streaming on YouTube, then you might do well as a scriptwriter. Today’s companies look for scriptwriters to help them with everything – adverts, landing page videos, and even films that they want to publish with companies like Netflix, or for social media like YouTube or Facebook.
Work from home IT jobs
Working from home online and IT go hand in hand. It’s the type of job that can be done from absolutely anywhere – all you need is a computer. So if you have a passion for technology or data, this could be the job for you.
Internet security specialist
An internet security specialist career involves monitoring networks for potential threats. As a specialist, you’ll also need to provide clients with advice and guidelines on how they can improve their security standards and overcome potential threats. As the demand for security and privacy online continues to grow, the need for people in this role will accelerate.
Data analyst
This is another great home opportunity for people who have a passion for technology. With big data growing around the world, it’s easy to find jobs for people who know how to take the insights generated by analytics tools and transform it into actionable strategies that businesses can understand.
Search engine optimisation
SEO is all about making sure that certain websites and web pages appear at the top of search engines when customers are searching for specific terms. To excel in a SEO role, you’ll need to keep up to date with Google’s latest algorithms and know how things like keywords and meta descriptions work. As a SEO expert, you can work with a business on their entire online marketing strategy.
Affiliate marketing
If you’ve never heard of affiliate marketing before, it’s basically the art of referring other people to a product that you want them to buy. Through videos, blogs, and other online content, you gently usher customers towards making a purchase. If your community buys the products you’re trying to sell, you earn a slice of the profits – and the bigger your audience, the bigger potential for sales. It can turn into quite a lucrative, well paid work from home job. It’s helpful to be familiar with market research if you really want to target your content.
Developer
Developers don’t need an office to be productive – they just need the right software. As a work from home developer, you can create anything you like, from smartphone applications to website widgets. Some developers also create entirely new programs. Just remember that you’ll need a decent amount of coding knowledge to succeed in this area. But if you have the right skills, this can be one of the best paying work from home jobs going.
Translating and proofreading jobs from home
Home based proofreader and editor
If you love reading, and you have an eye for detail, then proofreading could be the job for you. In this job, you’ll need to read through crucial pieces of copy and other written content to find mistakes. Proofreading isn’t as easy as it seems. You’ll need excellent grammar, and the patience to read several documents over and over again. However, if you’re confident with your literary skills, then you’ll do well in this home based role.
Translator working from home
If you’re fluent in more than one language, then you can rest assured there’s going to be someone out there looking for your help. Many companies need to translate their content into different languages to suit a wider audience. Although there are options like Google Translate, these are rarely as accurate as they should be and don’t always pick up on language nuances or different meanings.
More jobs you can do working from home
Still need more inspiration? The list doesn’t stop there. Here are a few more WFH roles for consideration.
Event planner
Know how to create memorable, personalised experiences for a specific group of people? Then you could do well as an event planner. Today, event planners don’t have to meet with their clients in-person to discuss parties, conferences, and weddings. Instead, they can do it all from home. Using online communications tools you can get a feel for what your customer needs so that you can create the perfect plan, and manage the whole process through to delivery.
Online teaching from home
There’s no limit to the number of skills that people can teach online. With video conferencing, you can create online webinars where people sign up to online courses – from traditional subjects to online cookery courses. Alternatively, you could produce pre-recorded videos and podcasts for people to purchase and download. Some teachers work one-on-one with their customers through video and audio chats on the web. This is especially common in the ESL (English as a second language) field, so why not think about doing an online TEFL course?
Online mentoring and coaching
If you’re skilled in a particular industry, then you might be able to make a living sharing your knowledge with others. Mentoring and coaching involves helping people achieve their goals, talking people through their problems, and more. You could even be a mentor and a teacher, giving people personalised lessons on the things that you’ve learned in the past. Online mentors can offer impressive and successful experiences that deliver great learning or coaching outcomes.
Run your own business from home
Anyone can start a company online with the right product, a website, and checkout software. You’ll be able to sell your product to people around the world. Just remember that this kind of online work will require a lot of time and effort on your part – and the work doesn’t end with creating your product.
If you’re keen to run your own eCommerce store, but you want to be a little more creative about it, then marketplaces like Etsy could be the perfect solution. You can even use methods like dropshipping, so you don’t have to store any products in your own home. Dropshipping means that a third-party supplier deals with creating products and sends them to your customers for you.
Remember that working from home means that you’ll need to pay for your own job-related utilities, such as gas, electricity, and broadband. The same applies if you’re a freelancer. You will need to cover your own tax, national insurance, holiday, sick, maternity/paternity pay and insurance – as well as your computer and office equipment.
How to find legitimate work from home opportunities
The best way to find work from home jobs is online. Review the advert in detail to make sure it’s genuine and never pay upfront for opportunities and products.
Look at traditional recruitment agencies, online job listing sites, customer service recruitment specialists such as Sensee and Arise, and marketplaces like Fiverr where you can sell your skills. Do your research and make informed decisions.
Are you ready to forget the office? Find out more about how RingCentral can help you get set up for working from home.
Originally published Dec 28, 2020, updated Apr 09, 2021
