Companies in Bangalore and other cities are asking their employees to work from home for a few days to cut the risk of Corona virus. We are living in interesting times.
Employees, teams and managements can do some simple things to maintain business continuity and high productivity.
What employees can do
- Dedicate a separate room in your home for work, at least during the working hours. Declutter the room, if needed. Do everything you can to make it appear like an office room. For example, position the furniture to get the best natural light and fresh air. Set up any hardware needed for meetings like this neat speakerphone or this comfortable headset.
- Make and stick to a schedule. Start work early. This way, you will be able to finish a lot of work in the first half of the day and then possibly take a relaxed lunch break. The idea here is to utilize your regular commute time to boost your productivity when your brain is fresh. Take predetermined short coffee/snack breaks. When you plan them, they don’t rob your time! Curb the tendency to drag your work day into late evening just because you have nothing else to do at home – This can make you less fresh the next morning.
- Track your work on a daily basis. Meticulously. Sysems like Jira can greatly help, but if unavailable, use a simple text file or Excel sheet or a shared document that your manager can look at when convenient.
What teams can do
- Communicate each others’ work timings, and ensure plenty of overlap. If possible, schedule a couple of meeting slots during the day to avoid ad hoc interactions.
- Seek and give help proactively to resolve blocking issues for each other. Do not allow physical separation to make team members slow to reach out to other team members. Be judicous with instant messaging, so it does n’t become chatter and disturbs everyone randomly. Establish ‘preferred times’ to discuss non-critical issues.
- Ensure everyone joins meetings on time, so no one’s time is wasted. This way, you can keep meetings crisp and to the point, sometimes as short as 15 minutes.
What managements can do
- Establish a common way to track and update status, if you already do not have a good system in place. This removes the need for a manager o constantly check if an employee is working or not. Instead, the status can be reviewed on a periodic basis.
- Encourage standard working hours and structured communication to keep teams productive as units.
- Make your employees feel good by telling them ‘We trust you that you will do your work’. This will eliminate the uncomfortable feelings in their minds about being ‘watched’.
Happy working from home and stay safe from the virus!