Challenging times have come. Due to the prevailing situation and government recommendations, many companies have opted for remote working. How to find yourself in the new reality? Let’s start from the beginning.
remote working – what is it?
Remote working involves performing tasks assigned by an employer outside a company’s office and it often means working from home. Choosing to work from home can offer tremendous benefits but it is not a perfect solution for everyone – it takes a lot of self-discipline and the ability to organize work well. On an employer’s side – it requires defining cooperation rules with an employee, such as working hours, communication forms and suitable company management.
coronavirus and remote working
The spreading epidemic has forced many companies to switch their work mode to remote working. For many people this is something completely new and some may find staying at home and working remotely quite challenging.
how to put it into practice
Have you decided to switch your company to remote working mode? Remember that trust is the core issue here. Don’t expect employees to sit for 8 hours non-stop in front of the computer – they neither do it in the office! Do your best to make the process as easy as possible for them. This is not an easy situation for any of us.
The main point is to define the necessary collaboration rules that will apply to each employee, such us:
- we all use the same tools
- every day at e.g. 10:00 we arrange a short conversation to discuss current issues,
- we evaluate effects of work in a defined way daily,
- longer absences must be communicated.
It is worth remembering that the above given rules should be adapted to the specificity of your company and respected by all employees, and any changes should be clearly communicated.
Here are some useful tips that should make home office effective.
1. Define working hours
Remote working takes a lot of self-discipline. Define with your co-workers your working hours and adjust them accordingly to be able to keep in touch with them. Keep each other posted about long absences.
While defining your schedules, don`t forget about breaks though! Nobody will work all day without a break. 8 hours spent in front of the computer without moving will certainly not have a positive impact on your eyes and spine, neither on the effect of your work! Find the right balance.
Tools such as WorkTime Expert that help tracking time and organizing your work will be extremely handy here.
2.Stay in touch with your coworkers
Remote working means you don’t have personal contact with the team. You can’t talk over a project or task over a cup of coffee. On top of it, employees left on their own are less motivated.
It is worth taking care of the communication tools to keep in touch with fellow workers. Of course, telephone or e-mail is the simplest way here, but we also recommend searching for dedicated solutions such as chat, that will allow quick messages exchange, both with a particular person and the whole team. It’s recommendable to use the chat integrated to the program that all employees already work on.
3. Organize online meetings
Your work may take frequent meetings and conversations with the client. Unfortunately, home office requires us to stay at home and limit meetings with other people. So how can this issue be solved? A piece of cake! The market is full of solutions that provide video calls with a share screen option and, for example, possibility of doing a presentation.
Actually, we strongly advise to implement this solution on a permanent basis. It saves a lot of time including time wasted to get to a meeting place!
4. Use a calendar
Important conversation with the client scheduled for 12:00? Or maybe between 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. you will do something that requires your full attention? Add these appointments to the calendar so that all employees are informed about them and nobody disturbs you during this time. Make sure this rule is on for the whole team, so everyone adds meetings there, etc.
This solution really makes things easier: You don’t get a million notifications of new messages during an important conversation, and a coworker is not irritated that you do not write back immediately 🙂
5. Store your files in a cloud
In many companies sending files is a nightmare, especially when it’s done via emails. Someone gets a file, puts his/her amendments on it, sends it back to the sender and so on forever. And the final version of the file is called “Doc19378434592”. Sounds familiar? Change it immediately.
Storing files in the cloud, to which everyone has access and can update files on a regular basis is already a common solution. There is an abundance of options to choose from, OwnCloud, Dropbox or Google Drive to mention only a few.
When it is necessary to work on one file simultaneously by several people, even Google (Google Docs, Google Sheets, etc.) comes in handy. All it takes is to provide a link to a particular file and all of you can work on it “live”.
6. Define a working mode and select necessary tools
As you may have noticed, many tools come in handy when working remotely from home. Remember, however, don`t overdose! Discouraging your employees is definitely the last thing that you want to do. And 15 new tools that they will suddenly have to learn will not increase their motivation, that’s for sure. So put your bet on all in one applications that combine many features at the same time. WorkTime Expert comes to the rescue.
WorkTime Expert aims to help entrepreneurs organize remote working. Especially in situations such as we are facing these days, it helps to optimize the work of the entire company and eliminates unprofitable activities. It has such features as:
- Time tracking – it’s not about controlling employees. When you go to home office, you must trust them! By tracking real working time, we collect data and check how many hours each project and task takes.
- Internal chat – thanks to it you will stay in touch with the team.
- Tasks – you will organize better your and your team’s work, you can assign task to a particular person or the whole team, set priorities and deadlines and have a preview of your current status.
- Manager panel – you have a “live” view of what happens on any given moment in the company, what your coworkers are working on.
- Calendar – you can add any dates in it: mark appointments with the client or define time when you are out of office that is visible to your fellow workers (unless you set a private date).
- Offline – Your coworkers use their home Internet and it may sometimes happen that they lose connection, luckily WorkTime Expert also works offline.
For further information please click HERE.
As you can see, remote working requires some changes in the company. However, with proper preparation, this is not so terrifying! Therefore, do not panic, but # StayAtHome and encourage your employees to do so!
Let’s WorkTime!
Try the app, it’s free: https://worktime.expert/registration