Work & Business

Tips to work remotely during the COVID19 crisis

With the lock-down measures imposed on more than 3 billions people, most of the office workers were forced to work from home. While the flexible working habits have still to spread through most of the companies (see ou previous article on that issue), staff was suddenly urged to adapt to the new conditions in confinement.

Even with the modern technologies using emails and shared documents, with remote connection to the companies IT infrastructure, certain things need to change: you won't have so many face-to-face meetings anymore and rely on instant messaging tools instead of popping out to your colleague's desk to ask for some information.

Here are 4 tips that could help you work from home during the confinement period (and even after, as your company might decide to move to flexible working):

1. Work routine:  when working completely remotely it is easy to feel distracted: some friends are sending you messages that you want to answer, you are thinking about some videos that one told you on YouTube, you need to check on Amazon or eBay those items you will need for the weekend, the kids are asking for attention...
   
   • Therefore you should try to dedicate specific hours where you will concentrate on work only.
2. Connect with work frequently: One of the main problem with remote work is to feel disconnected from your colleagues. As you are not in the same office, it's easy to miss information and loose some communication that however may impact your work.
   
   • That's why regular (even short) call meeting are necessary - a voice conversation might dissipate quickly a misunderstanding that otherwise could last in emails.
3. Work-life boundary: While you are working from home it is tempting to check your work mailbox at any hours and finish your tasks during weekend and late nights. However, not knowing when you work-day ends is a recipe for stress and frustration and you might quickly become overloaded with work.
   
   • You should try to set a time for the end of the work day; past that limit, work-tasks will have to be postponed to the day after and .
4. Leadership: for some managers who are used to be surrounded by their team, remote working might be a worrying new experience. However, most of the time people are not productive because they lack proper guidelines and monitoring to achieve their tasks.
   
   • Keep track of all your staff achievements and check that they have the necessary tools to carry out their tasks. You should ask for regular task progress, issue regular feedback and share information.
   • Schedule face time with individual employees to ensure that they don’t feel disconnected, and encourage collaborations that drive team performance.

For the recent years, office based companies were implementing slowly some flexible working practice. The current coronavirus might just be the accelerator that will deeply change the way we all work in the coming years.

 

---

 Author: Cyrilexpat |  2020-04-03 10:00:41

Return to previous page.