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Tips for Successful Work from Home or Remotely
Preparing
- Remember to bring everything you need: laptop, power cords, passwords, cell phone battery. Forward your work phone to your cell phone or install Cisco soft phone.
- Check your connectivity at home before initiating your work from home or work remotely.
- Ensure your team and coworkers have your relevant contact information, like your cell phone number. Consider updating your email signature to include your telephone number.
- Keep your calendar up to date. Your co-workers will need to know when you’re available to connect.
When working from home
- Continue to work your normally assigned work hours. Having a definitive start and end time to work helps to maintain boundaries between work and personal life. If you need to change your hours, you must have a conversation with your manager for approval; then make your co-workers aware.
- Set up a quiet, proper, organized workspace. We realize that other family members may also be at home, or home from school, so that may at times prove difficult.
- Be sure to get up and move every once in a while. Time can go quickly, so getting up to move and stretch can be important to both your mind, body and spirit.
- Dress as if you are coming into the office. It can help orient your brain towards work.
- Try and limit home distractions. Again, we know that can be a challenge if there are other family members at home with you.
- Limit your time on email. While you may feel less connected, it’s important to remain focused on your tasks for the day.
- Concise and clear communications skills become incredibly important. Most of your communication may be done via email or social platforms and messages can easily get lost.
- Remember if you have connectivity issues, the IT helpdesk is available to help you.
Feedback and Connecting
- Set clear expectations with your team and coworkers on your deliverables. Be upfront about the work on your plate.
- Managers should try and make time for regular feedback for all employees. Meaningful feedback and saying thank you can really help keep up team morale. Contemplate using the One Award platform to recognize significant, valuable contributions to the team.
- Connect at regular intervals with your team and your manager to stay abreast of work issues and to maintain a collaborative, team work environment. Tools like Google hangouts for meetings or small discussions, team Slack channels, Google IM or even calls to cell phones can be simple ways to stay in touch.
- You may find you schedule more meetings in order for the team to remain connected. Consider creating agendas to keep meetings to the point, but build in time for an open, sharing dialogue.
- Recognizing working from home can feel isolating. You may want to reach out to colleagues for connections more frequently and we encourage you to do so.
Tags:Work Remotely