A couple of months ago, I had written an article highlighting some of the key challenges facing remote work. In this article, I am going to share some tips to overcome those challenges and make remote work more productive.
The success of a work-from-home program depends on the provision of the right tools and policies by the employer and also on the active participation of the employees. Once the employer fulfills their responsibilities toward creating an effective work-from-home system, it is up to the employees to use that system productively.
The following sections detail the responsibilities of the employee and the employer as well as best practices and tips for building a successful remote work program:
Employer’s Responsibilities For Effective WFH
1. Set Expectations For Remote Workers
The success of a project or enterprise depends on goal-setting. Similarly, teams' success also depends on setting expectations and establishing accountability. When an employee walks into the office, the expectation is evident as there are readily available guidelines about workplace operations and behaviors.
However, working from home is new, and adjusting to it doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Setting and communicating expectations for remote work ensure that the same clarity exists when working from home.
Setting expectations for working from home starts with creating a Work From Home And Telecommuting Policy. It establishes a baseline against which performance can be measured and holds employees accountable. Setting clear goals and communicating expectations also empowers employees. The structure and guidelines enable them to act autonomously, which is crucial when working remotely since remote employees have to manage themselves for the most part.
2. Adapt The Management Style
Managing remote teams presents many challenges, a lack of touch points and asynchronous communication being the biggest ones. So, the traditional methods of team management, which were designed for teams working under the same roof, do not work well for remote teams.
Here are a few steps that team leaders and managers can take to adapt to the new working environment:
Establish Team Touch Points
Unlike with on-site teams, impromptu meetings and walking in for clarifications are not possible with remote teams. Therefore, to help the team stay connected touch points need to be established. Here are some examples of team touch points:
Daily or weekly standups
One-on-one check-ins
Open office hours
Set Communication Guidelines
To work productively, distributed teams need frequent communication. But, frequent digital communication is a double-edged sword. Too many messages can quickly cause notification fatigue that can lead to important messages slipping through the cracks and going unnoticed. In addition, notifications are distracting and do not allow for deep work.
Communication guidelines, which control the volume and quality of messages, help alleviate these challenges posed by digital communication. The guidelines should cover the creation, use of communication channels, and organization based on user groups. It should also include guidelines for when to use direct messages and when to use team channels.
The segregation of communication channels based on user groups ensures that users only receive messages that are relevant to them and prevents notification fatigue to a large extent.
Avoid Micromanagement
One key challenge that is difficult to manage is asynchronous communication. It is especially tricky to navigate for managers who are used to prompt responses from their team members. Sometimes, the challenge is not the delay but the curtness of the response. It is difficult to accept a simple “OK” when one is expecting an elaborate response.
Knowing exactly what the team members are doing is not always possible and long waits for responses can lead to frustration, anxiety, and resentment. In such instances, it is easy to fall into micromanagement- constant monitoring, frequent progress reviews, and close scrutiny of timesheets, disturbing the efficient functioning of the team.
Staying consistent with the established team touch points and following the established communication guidelines helps keep pesky micromanagement at bay.
3. Create A Culture Of Documentation
Documentation is important, but it is even more so when teams work remotely. Documentation shows its true value during transitions, handovers, and coverage for team members who call in sick. Remote teams benefit greatly from good documentation because it eliminates the need for knowledge transfer meetings and to and fro messages.
Good documentation conveys how to perform a task in the most lucid way possible. A culture of documentation guarantees that every piece of information is captured and curated. This helps break knowledge silos, ensuring relevant information is readily available when needed.
Here are a few documentation best practices:
Document tasks that:
Require three or more steps,
Require specialized knowledge that is not commonly known,
Is repeated often.
How to document:
Keep it short and to the point
Avoid acronyms, abbreviations, and jargon. If unavoidable, explain them.
Show, don’t tell. Use videos, screenshots, etc.
Ask for feedback and improve the documentation.
4. Provide The Right Tools
While the concept of productivity is universal, how it is achieved varies from business to business. Organizations invest in applications that not only assist employees in their tasks but also in dealing with mundane tasks more efficiently. The investment has a two-fold impact, improving productivity and reducing stress.
In addition to the business applications, remote work warrants additional tools to help with communication and cloud-based collaboration that are critical for efficient remote work. Identifying and providing the right tools will facilitate remote work and ensure productivity. While the tools needed will vary with the role of the team, we have talked about a few of our favorite ones in an earlier blog post: 5 Best Productivity Apps For Getting More Done.
5. Provide Efficient IT Support
Remote employees depend almost entirely on cloud-based applications and communication tools for work. If anything goes wrong with these applications, and it often does, remote employees will be unable to work. Providing tech support in such cases can be extremely difficult since technicians can’t simply “drop in”.
This problem is exacerbated when organizations do not have a dedicated IT person. The cost of poor IT support is $6,876 per employee per year or higher. In addition to the lost time and opportunity costs, poor IT also causes frustration and dissatisfaction among employees. All the tools, systems, and processes will come to naught without fast and efficient IT support.
Investment in robust IT support for remote employees will pay for itself many times over by increasing productivity and enhancing employee happiness.
6. Help Manage Stress
The constant pursuit of high performance and productivity can be stressful. This stress doesn’t make any exception whether one works from home or from the office. Stress negatively impacts the employee, the team, and the organization as a whole. The impact of work-related stress extends beyond mental and includes physical, and social well-being.
Stress leads to a drop in productivity, mistakes, and tensions among the team members. It is in the best interest of all involved to create a stress-free work environment. Organizations can help employees manage or better still avoid stress altogether by creating a healthy work culture and using mindfulness to create a happy workplace.
Employee’s Responsibilities For Productive WFH
1. Over Communicate
As we mentioned earlier, asynchronous communication is a huge challenge for remote teams. So, it is always better to over communicate than under communicate. Keeping the team informed helps set expectations about response times. And, much of this can be done asynchronously so that there is no notification fatigue.
Here are some communication best practices:
Share your calendar with the team so they know your schedule.
Keep your calendar up-to-date and indicate meetings, events, blocked-off time slots, etc. so the team knows what you are working on and when you are busy.
Use emojis to quickly respond to requests so that the team knows the status or progress of the requests.
Use the status on your messaging app to let your team know if you are away, out for lunch, or in an impromptu meeting.
To learn more about effective communication when working remotely refer to this article: How To Communicate Effectively When Working Remotely.
2. Follow Virtual Meeting Etiquettes
Remote teams heavily rely on virtual meetings. So, it is important to make the best out of those meetings. Here are some best practices to help make virtual meetings more productive:
Always respond to meeting invitations,
Designate a host,
Share the meeting agenda beforehand,
Set aside time for some small talk,
Don’t multitask during meetings,
Turn on your camera,
Mute your microphone when not speaking,
Follow up quickly after the meeting.
To learn more about these video conferencing best practices, refer to our earlier article: How To Make Your Virtual Meetings More Productive, where we have discussed them in more detail.
Shared Responsibilities For WFH Security
In addition to the individual responsibilities of the employer and the employee, there are shared responsibilities, primarily concerning security, that are necessary for secure and effective remote work. While the employer is responsible for providing the security tools and systems and ensuring the overall security of the infrastructure, the employee is responsible for the safety of their accounts and for authorized use.
Here are some best practices for securing the work-from-home environment:
Make sure that all network devices use WPA2 (WiFi Protected Access II)
Create and use a separate SSID (service set identifier) for work
Use a password manager
Beware of cyberattacks such as BEC (Business Email Compromise)
Beware of social media security risks
Securing the work-from-home environment takes a lot of time and effort. To help remote workers, we have created a handy checklist that covers all the basics of work-from-home security. It can be accessed here: IT Security Checklist For Remote Employees.
Tips For Productive WFH
1. Accept That Not Every Strategy Or Tip Will Work For You
There’s a lot of knowledge out on the internet about working remotely, being productive, and time management but not all of it will work for everyone. Everyone has different goals and work habits so one shouldn’t feel compelled to use a strategy or tip that isn’t a good fit. So the most important piece of advice is to ignore strategies that aren’t a good fit.
2. Establish A Routine
Every day is full of choices- whether to hit the snooze button or not, whether to exercise or not, whether to shower before breakfast or after. What we don’t realize is that making decisions, even small ones take up a lot of mental resources. I have talked about this at length in a previous article about the challenges of remote work.
Establishing a routine helps avoid mental resource-draining decisions. A pre-decided routine or schedule is a great way to start the day feeling fresh instead of feeling overwhelmed or stressed.
3. Have A Dedicated Workspace
Keeping a dedicated space for work helps build a routine. The work day starts when one enters the workspace. This is also beneficial for maintaining a work-life balance because it establishes a clear boundary between work and home. So, when one leaves the dedicated workspace, they can shut off from work.
4. Make A To-Do List
One of the reasons why working from home is difficult is because of the many distractions around the house. It is so easy to get lost in all of the notifications and distractions. Making a to-do list first thing in the morning helps one stay organized and focused.
To-do lists inculcate accountability and crossing things off the list also gives a sense of accomplishment. So, even if there are distractions, one can refer to the list to see what really needs attention.
5. Don’t Expect An Immediate Response To Messages
Remote workers don’t have the luxury of walking up to their colleagues to seek clarifications, ask questions, or get help. Even when a remote team follows communication best practices, there will arise the need for communicating via messaging, which is, almost always, asynchronous.
Asynchronous communication is, in fact, one of the advantages of remote work as it allows the team members to engage in distraction-free deep work. The messages sent are unlikely to get immediate responses and that should be accepted.
6. Engage In Deep Work To Limit Distractions And Stay Productive
Deep work is the ability to focus on a single task without getting distracted. It is essential for cognitively demanding tasks such as calculations and analysis. While multitasking may allow one to get a lot done but it is at the expense of time or quality or both. Mono tasking, on the other hand, is much more productive.
The ability to engage in deep work does wonders for work-from-home productivity. To learn more about deep work, check out our article How to Increase Productivity: Deep Focus vs Multitasking.
7. Take Breaks
Breaks at the office happen without even realizing it. Chats with colleagues, work discussions that go off on a tangent, water-cooler talk, and coffee trips are all activities that give our minds respite from the long hours of work.
While working from home, the employees need to come up with their own ways to include short breaks in their schedules. Short breaks are not just beneficial for the body but also for the mind, allowing one to return to work refreshed and can spark new ideas.
8. Reach Out If You Are Struggling
Working from home can be difficult. Not everyone is built the same and for many, the lack of social interactions can be difficult to deal with. There are also instances where some people simply have a bad, unproductive day. The lack of social interaction can make such days especially difficult to manage.
So, reaching out to colleagues for help when things aren’t going well is very important. It is very beneficial for employees to occasionally meet or schedule calls to socialize and engage in non-work activities.
9. Listen To Music
Listening to music while working can be a part of your work routine. Putting the headphones on can be a signal that office hours have started. Music can serve to keep out distractions while one concentrates on important tasks. Listening to music can also be excellent when performing those parts of the job that aren’t particularly enjoyable.
10. Learn From The Experts
Just as work-related skills need to be updated from time to time, productivity and work habits can also be updated. The tips and best practices shared in this article is only the tip of the iceberg. There are many experts who regularly share their knowledge on productivity, deep work, and work-life balance via books, blogs, and podcasts. Learning from these experts is a great way to improve work-from-home skills.
Conclusion
Whether a team works remotely, in the office, or in a hybrid environment, each has its own benefits and drawbacks. While remote work does have many challenges, most of them can be overcome. Creating a successful work-from-home program depends on a combination of technology, policies, and culture.
Creating a successful work-from-home program depends on a combination of technology, policies, and culture.
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Office-based work has evolved over a long period of time and most likely so will work-from-home. In the meantime, the best practices listed above can help employees and employers alike to overcome some of the challenges associated with working from home.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.