Tips When Working From Home
As an employer, one of the immediate impacts of Covid-19 on your business is a change to remote working from your team.
This change will present both opportunities and challenges for employers. To make the best of the situation, here are our top tips to help you and your team work efficiently.
Build Good Habits
This is the number 1 thing in all you can do when working from home. You and your team must work at home in a way which replicates how you would work in your office.
Pick a place to work which allows you to focus on the job at hand. Avoid having TV on in the same room. Try (where possible) to work at a desk. If you can, pick a room that allows you to work without a constant flow of people in and out.
Start your day how you would always kick off if you were going to the office. Get dressed, wash your face and show up!
Equipment and IT
Make sure your staff have everything they need to be able to complete their work easily, efficiently and effectively from home. Allow people to take all their IT equipment home where necessary. Some employers are putting in place expenses reimbursements from use of home heating, electricity and internet. Check out the tax rules in this area if you need to set up a policy to pay such expenses to your team.
Working Hours
Aim to stick to your usual working hours if you can. Some people start earlier in the day as they will have kids at home, so quiet time in the early morning helps to get important tasks done and dusted. Take regular breaks and step outside for some fresh air. It’s good to play with your kids during breaks too as it can help minimise disruption during the rest of the day.
Diet
It’s all too easy to start eating anything and everything in the kitchen cupboards. Buy some fresh food and healthier snacks. Keep these within reach and put the sweet stuff high up out of the way. Make sure you drink plenty of water too and not just coffee after coffee.
Stay In Touch
Hold regular check ins and keep communication lines open. Our team at Cloud 360 Accounting have a daily catch-up every morning with the whole team on either Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Keep everyone focused on being proactive, positive and getting stuff done instead of talking about the worst of things. Use web cams too so that it helps everyone see one another – every little helps!
The Legal Stuff
As an employer, you will be bound by contracts of employment with your staff. Make sure these are up-to-date to cover all circumstances surrounding working from home.
Be Results Focused
It is even more important to keep your team focused on the things that matter from your business and your clients/customers.
Make sure your team are results focused, with daily and weekly work schedules that are drawn up to get stuff done. Keep work plans under review and tweak regularly. Allow your team to get access to you when needed to keep the work flowing along.
Mental Health
Above everything, it is vital that you and your team stay safe. Allow people to enjoy time with their family too and try to encourage everyone not to get sucked into all the news and social media posts every hour of every day.
Suggest things that will ensure your team exercise their minds with the right tools, such as good books and watching and listening to personal and business development content online.
Stick Together
All in all, you need to ensure you are all pulling in the same direction when working remotely. Keep everyone involved in what the whole team are working on, allow tasks to be shared out across the team and keep everyone motivated by celebrating even the smallest of wins. Plan to have a team day out whenever some kind of normality returns. We will all get through this by working together.
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