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2020 can be called a year of lost innovation. The need of the hour is to not to overdose on bad news. With major changes in the work-home environments, people are fiddling in-between productivity and consistency bottlenecks. Even if each one of them is trying to be 200% accurate, the tracking and monitoring pressures, getting removed from all sorts of social interactions, mental and physical health tends to do very badly, leading straight to depression.
What Seems Right: WFH
The team who embraced the idea to work-from-home was the one who was involved in the activities that were not team-based. Their work was independent and didn’t require them to meet with other people. For most of the employees, motivation and creativity come from being around other people.
COVID-19+WFH: It’s the Years’ Longest Festival
The Coronavirus has prompted countless companies to close their offices or to offer employees options to work remotely. We all are amongst those who are suddenly navigating this new work-from-home normal. Here are some steps and resources to help you out with this transition:
- Build clear communications channels to keep involved team members accountable and informed
- Create a strong support network to prevent feelings of isolation
- Develop clear, consistent guidelines for flexible work so that it’s fair for everyone
- Encourage managers to model healthy flexible work arrangements
- Flexible work arrangements can benefit the whole company when established properly
- Stay hydrated, stay active and take regular breaks. It is often easy to forget to move (more when we realize that the time-tracker is on)
- Stay up-to-date, stay fit, schedule your food-exercises-daily essentials-sleep.
- Now, this is important. This is the time to stay fit for ourselves as well as for our dependents. Try to inculcate the habit of avoiding the snack drawer by not keeping snacks in the house.
- Schedule Meetings – with team leads, co-workers and all concerned colleagues to “humanize communication”
When Multitasking Becomes A Problem
This needs some attention; Most of us juggle with the demands of many teams at once. While this “multi-teaming” offers several upsides like deploying your expertise exactly where and when it’s most needed, share your knowledge across groups, and switch projects during lull times, avoiding costly downtimes. But moving in-between tasks takes time and saps your focus and energy. You also probably need to adjust to different roles – while you might be senior in some project, and might come across as a junior member on another. This level of accountability often comes to test while you are required to juggle resources when crunch time hits.
What We Suggest to Sort the Boredom?
Unless you carefully plan and negotiate your contribution to each team, you may end up doing repetitive work instead of pushing your development. Managing your time, stress and development if you’re on multiple teams will require some introspection. In addition to this, the seniority of your stakeholders will set the tone for establishing priorities while the speed and demand of your project will determine the ideal frequency of check-ins when push comes to shove. The best thing is to coordinate the group and compatible duties. The fewer the number of switches, the better will be the day, saving a lot of mental peace.
The Etiquette of Working from Home
Flexible working can help boost morale and productivity of the workforce and was already in practice in a few European and American countries. But the spread of the Coronavirus has pushed many people into enforced self-isolation; businesses are starting to see more extended periods of remote working. We know that every one of us is finding our own best practice for avoiding distraction and getting work done.
Remote technologies (video conferencing, instant chat) have become easy to use with subsequent practice; the etiquette of working from home is still being established. Should you video conference from your sofa or terrace? And is a phone call better than messaging?
- Have a dedicated “work” space.
- Don’t forget to eat and hydrate.
- Good Bluetooth headphones.
- Take breaks that involve social interactions.
- You need a good chair. Trust.
- Dress & groom like it’s an office day. You’ll feel more “on” and alert.
- Don’t eat lunch — or dinner — at your desk
- Have a schedule
- Enjoy your surroundings
- Manage clients’ expectations
- Change your workplace at least once a week, like every Friday sit in your balcony or terrace or your garden and work from there if possible.
- Set alarms to move
- Develop a workout routine
- Do chores to break up your day
- Call People
- Start your morning by grounding yourself
- It is better to plan a short call instead of rambling through emails or text messages. This would enable you to wrap up the conversation in one shot instead of exchanging back-and-forth messages for a long period.
- Find something productive to do, if you find yourself getting distracted constantly.
- Write down the points to cover on a piece of paper to help yourself stay focused throughout the day.
- Keep your workplace clean and organized.
- Distractions are inevitable and they are all around us, but you need to figure out and not be the culprit of anyone’s focus issues.
Looking for a Top Tip to Work-from-Home Successfully?
I’m sure, none of us was prepared enough for remote working (an imposed one). And in these 3 weeks of lockdown till now, there were a couple of moments when the cabin fever soon set in when we’re working from home. So what we suggest (may not apply to all) is to ensure that you schedule at least one call – a video or an audio one – per day – without fail. It would be better than spending an entire day in silence. #COVID19 has changed the way we socialize and work. Konstant’s Management has flexibly responded to this flexible disruption but has also used it as an opportunity to re-imagine work broadly. Mere hoping and praying is not the strategy, neither it is like as if they handed the laptops and said “go work somewhere else” on the day they expand wide-scale quarantines. During this #pandemicbasedlockdown the only way to remain operational was to make as many employees work remotely as possible. All the cross-functional team heads across mobile, hybrid, web, HR, Pre-sales, Post-Sales, Digital marketing, Network Administrators gathered to plan for different scenarios and optimize execution, should circumstances require a rapid response. All the available IT hardware and software were audited and any gaps in the access and adoption were closed. The comfort level with specific applications like video conferencing and other collaboration/communication platforms were closed. All such gaps were closed via adequate training on emails and calls. Although real-time mastery was not optimal and was inefficient, all data security issues were considered and addressed beforehand. Communication protocols were set up in advance.
Organizations have shifted to working from home, but this does not ensure that they have magically empowered all their employees to focus better. The communication plan that is outlined in between management and employees and between co-workers needs to ensure how to reach everybody, how each one of them is expected to respond, and how various teams will coordinate and meet. All this data will help them understand what worked and what didn’t work with all the reasons when this #GlobalOutbreak gets over.