With many employers having made the switch to remote working as a response to COVID-19, it’s important for employees to take the time to learn about what they can do to stay productive when working from home.
Here are a few tips to stay as busy as a beaver when working from your dam.
Know That You’re Not Alone
All around the world, businesses are doing their part to stop the spread of COVID-19, and that involves preventing the spread of the virus by limiting the number of individuals we interact with. Canadians have been proactive in protecting against COVID-19 by making sure they avoid getting sick and doing everything within their power to not infect others.
It helps to learn more about COVID-19 and why we’re working from home in the first place. This video from a YouTube channel called Kurzgesagt does a great job explaining why staying at home and working remotely is helping to slow the pandemic.
Set Your Working Hours
40% of people feel that the greatest benefit of remote working is the flexible schedule, but for those recently adjusting to a remote working lifestyle, you’ve probably already noticed that the hours between 9:00am – 5:00pm (or your regularly scheduled working hours) can seem less predictable when you’re no longer leaving your house each day.
To help keep working hours from getting out of control, it helps to set your hours based on the needs of your job. In many cases, jobs with client or customer interaction require you to be available during operating hours – but for jobs that allow flexible hours, it’s quite easy to lose track of time.
Setting your own hours to meet the needs of your business and personal schedule will help early birds stay productive in the morning and night owls work hard in the evening.
Once you have a timeframe in mind, be sure to let those you are in contact with know what your working hours are to prevent distraction. This includes your coworkers, family members, and close friends.
Schedule Breaks for Yourself
Just like setting what your working hours will be, it’s important to set breaks in your day. Having a set time and notification booked in your own calendar is a great way to tell yourself to take a step back, breathe, and prevent burnout.
Most workplaces have natural interruptions, such as coworkers stopping by your desk to chat, meetings, or just stepping out for lunch. These little changes of pace in our day help break up our work and can actually make us more productive. It’s not to say that working from home is distraction free – far from it – but having set chunks of time to relax helps us to unwind and take care of the distractions that can take us away from our work.
Gallup recently surveyed 7,500+ full-time employees and found that 23% of workers reported feeling burnt out regularly and 44% reported feeling burnt out sometimes.
Many workplaces have adopted Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook to view the availability of their coworkers while they work remotely. If your company is the same, then consider booking in 15-minute chunks of time dedicated to taking a break.
Make Use of Work-from-Home Tools
The team at Mentor Works has found the following tools useful when collaborating remotely:
Microsoft Teams: This tool is Microsoft’s all-encompassing answer for workplace collaboration, both in and out of the office. It allows for online team meetings through video calls, screen sharing, instant messaging, remote keyboard and mouse access, and is available through desktop and mobile devices via the various Microsoft Teams apps or through a web browser.
It’s also worth noting that Microsoft has an entire app store of integrations for Microsoft Teams to help you and your coworkers collaborate. These integrations include Office 365, Dropbox, Trello, Evernote, Stack Overflow, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and even Zoom.
This tool is commonly used in the following industries: accounting, marketing, sales, education, and government.
Zoom Meetings: This tool offers a slightly different approach to team collaboration. While Microsoft Team focuses on integrations, Zoom has focused on developing their video conferencing tools, allowing your team to video chat in meeting rooms, host webinars, and call in with a mobile phone.
This tool is commonly used in the following industries: education, finance, and healthcare.
These are just a few of the best video chat software applications that have been helping businesses adapt to a remote working lifestyle without sacrificing collaborationprof
Stay proactive in the fight against this pandemic by checking the latest COVID-19 funding updates for Canadian businesses and individuals.