Work from home setup or remote working doesn't have to be hard. With the pandemic, the majority of the companies are forced to work remotely to continue operations and thrive.
It can be manageable for the parties of the employers and employees especially if the workforce arises already familiar with the setup.
According to the Blue jeans survey," 40 percent there were more productive because of the work from home setup."
There has been a lot of changes since this setup has been implemented in the corporate world.
Another survey by leadership says,"87 percent chances of an employee to love their jobs if they work from home."
1. What employees and employers must do
Both employees and employees need to understand what is asynchronous communication, asynchronous also works for global remote teams working in different time zones. The asynchronous communication also works well on a remote yet global setup.
Deep work that doesn't need to have an urgent communication because it takes time is as following:
Drafting a launch plan for a new feature
Programming
Preparing for an upcoming keynote presentation
Researching information on a specific problem
The more you give people a chance to use asynchronous communication the more opportunity you give them to do deep thinking.
And deep work which has positive effects and long-lasting impact for the business.
Employees and employers should form a trusting relationship for the work from home setup to work. and it's a two-way street.
There are four subsequent problems when employees and employers don't have trust:
Conflict
Lack of commitment
Avoidance of responsibility and accountability
Inattention to results
So all of these lead to subpar or sub-optimal performance for your team.
The employees and employers should be aligned when it comes to meeting results or business objectives.
Two practical tips to start fostering a trusting relationship with your team:
The company can use these tools to engage their employees and build trust.
1. Get to know you bingo- it's fun game employees can get to know their team better.
2. Quiz breaker - virtual team building
HR practitioners have been doing their best to create team collaboration and engagement programs during the work from home setup.
It's also a part of gamification since most of the employees are millennials this works well for them since they want something engaging, fun, and collaborative.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Millennials already are the largest segment in the workplace. Within the next two years, 50 percent of the U.S. workforce is expected to be made up of Millennials. It will be 75 percent by 2030."
These statistics shows how the younger generation is working and employers should do their best to cater to the millennials workforce in an engaging and productive manner.
Another important thing that employers should be doing is prioritizing security.
2. What employees must do
There are three kinds of security employers should keep in mind:
1. Physical - assets of the company and employees of the company, the welfare of your employees should be secured not just physically but also mentally.
2. Digital - most assets are digital now like clouds or technologies, the security of digital assets.
3. Privacy - One of the most important for both of the employees and employers is the privacy of data. There are now heavy fines when it comes to not practicing diligence on private data of the clients, company or the data privacy officer will go to jail.
A few things that can help employees:
Music - to be more productive
Aromatherapy- the scent of the workplace is part of the ambiance that puts you in a working mood.
Using high-quality bulbs and good lightning
Here's Stanford university top five tips to videoconferencing:
1. Well lit places are more engaging
2. Avoid distraction
3. Always mute yourself when you are not talking
4. Always send out the link when you send an invitation
5. Always check your system in an advance of the conference
The video conferencing might be the only face to face communication that employees and employers can engage in. It's a skill to be on camera since you want to be presentable and clean.
Wall Street tech tip on hanging signs or notices on your door to notify your family that you are working.
Aside from using hanging signs on your door, it's best to check your Internet frequency by using Project Bass. org and it's a free application from a bit stop. You'll know your internet connectivity and be proactive in fixing it.
3. What employers must do
It's the responsibility of the employer on how to make the remote setup work be more productive.
Employers need to set the right kind of expectations by embodying it on the right document. Both the employees and employees should have a work from the home agreement.
Here is the checklist that must be in the agreement:
1. How is the work measured and compensated?
2. " No expectation of privacy " policy
3. Standard of due care and Data loss policy
4. The privilege of working from home must be earned, approved, and can be revoked anytime.
5. Employees must be able to report to the office when asked, even on a work from home setup.
6. Who takes care of the hardware and software?
7. Who takes care of the incidental expenses?
8. Communication plans and check-ins with team members.
9. Vacation and sick leave policy
There must be an orientation on the work from home setup.
Employers must:
1. Provide proper hardware tools
2. Must provide stable power or internet connectivity
3. You need to provide AVR, UPS at least 20 minutes of backup power, and its a good investment for the company.
4. Invest a second monitor for the employees to increase productivity
For the employers, they can have two or more monitors depending on their work from home setup. While for the employees they can have echo canceling headset and software for their job.
Productivity tools:
I done this- project management
Time doctor- measuring time productivity
Krisp- software-based noise-canceling
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