Work From Home: Tips & Best Practices

About 74% of CFOs surveyed by Gartner expect at least 5-10% of their employees to continue working from home after the pandemic ends. In addition to that, Twitter announced that its employees can now work from home ‘forever’. Some of the world’s biggest companies (Hint: Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.) were the first to launch extensive WFH policies.

Organizations have faced the issue to manage employees working remotely. They have no clue about their work efficiency; productivity and giving them the right feedback to perform better each day. We have got you covered in this article with your WFH monitoring issues. We will talk about measuring the productivity of your employees in this article.

Worried about productivity while working from home?

While it’s true that working from home liberates your employees from the daily commute, and allows them more family time. However, employees also need to put in that extra effort to get as much done as they would in the office. Working parents and even those living alone can have a hard time putting their time to the best use, given their work environment. Whether it’s done out of necessity or choice, working from home has both pros and cons. To help your employees’ working-at-home to be productive, here are some tips:

Create ‘work triggers’

Give employees suggestions to create a trigger to get themselves ready to start a working day from home. It could be exercising, reading the news, or even the same old cup of tea. Distractions are one of the biggest challenges while working from home. Use these triggers (like a tea break in the middle of the day, similar to a day at the office) to get them back on track.

Help them to set up a permanent workspace

One of the very first steps to enhance the productivity of your employees during the usual work from home day is to help them set up a suitable workstation with proper tools. Advise them to arrange an empty or spare space in their house that can easily be converted into a home office. Suggest them that their workstation should have a comfortable chair that will keep their back straight and supported. This will help them to concentrate on the work without any posture strain. Ideally, a home office should be within a quiet area of their house with minimum distraction and far from their bed and couch.

Setting priorities and provide a to-do list

Making your employees stay focused throughout working hours is one of the major steps to be optimistic while working from home. One of the best ways to make them stay focused is to develop a hierarchical framework of their daily and weekly tasks with their respective supervisor and teammates. Planning a day as per priorities is sure to get them going. This little effort gives an extra push to finish their tasks timely. In addition to helping them to make a to-do list, using a calendar or planner helps them to keep track of deadlines, meetings, and appointments.

Make it a regular working at the office

Building a mindset as if the employees will be working from an ‘office’ will allow them to stay mentally connected with the work. For this, advise them to follow their normal office-day routines like wake-up times and adhere to office working hours. If they were used to working for a set number of hours in a day, say 9 AM to 6 PM, enforce them to stick to that. More often than not, when employees are working from home, lines seem to blur between ‘work time’ and time for themselves. Not ‘packing up for the day’ may nudge them into overwork. Hence, productivity and deadlines get hampered big time.

Ban social media during working hours

Unfortunately, one of the most distracting aspects of today’s digital world is social media. Picking up your devices every 15-20 minutes is only going to delay your work and push you down the rabbit hole. While working from home, it’s easier than ever to get distracted by a video on YouTube or an Instagram update. Set strict guidelines against the use of social media during working hours and build an HR policy around it. Make the employees aware of the consequences that you can take as an organization in case of non-adherence to work rules.

Motivate them to practice self-care

One of the most important aspects while working from home is to keep energy levels boosted. Regular physical exercise is the best solution to remain energetic through a working day at home. A daily workout keeps your heart healthy and the mind fresh. A study published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics reported that inactive people could increase energy by 20% and decrease fatigue almost by 65% through a daily basis low-intensity exercise only. Engage your employees in weekly video call sessions to check how they are feeling, about their health and habits. Introduce physical instructors and nutritionists in the video call; ask them to provide tips to employees for better physical and mental health.

Communicate and collaborate often

It is important to stay connected to your teams. For them, it’s natural to feel disconnected from your company if you go without contact for a long time. Communication is key to success in any business and more important when you work from home because they are no longer just a few desks away from their supervisors and co-workers. Use video conferencing or online chat tools to stay connected with your team. 

Overcoming obstacles: Business Ops & Work From Home

An all-in-one remote working solution is what brands need to keep a check on quality as well as productivity for their employees and more so for their support teams. With the crunch of space, time, health, and financial concerns work from home is tougher for more people than we realize. We at Maxicus, provide complete work from home solutions that businesses have implemented. It is an AI-enabled remote working platform for both employer and employee, equipped with multiple integrated solutions. From remote learning & training, workforce monitoring, remote collaboration to reporting & analytics, data security, and network health check, it is the complete employee management, monitoring, training, and productivity solution for businesses across industries.