A Guide to Upgrading Your Home-Working Setup
In March and April, working from home felt novel. Nowadays, it’s become run-of-the-mill and a little dull – and as a business leader or manager you might have noticed that your staff are becoming a little sloppy, both in appearance and in their working style. In order to give your remote working teams a much-needed shot in the arm this winter, this guide looks at upgrading your remote working setup so that your team runs effectively and confidently into 2021.
Oversight
For the first months of the remote working revolution, workers had to be trusted without a great deal of managerial oversight. You might have made a morning and evening call with your staff, to ensure they were at their desks and ready to work. You may have asked them for progress reports. But, in all honesty, you didn’t know whether they spend the majority of their day in front of their desks, or their televisions.
Now, there are apps to help you monitor the working day of your staff. This doesn’t mean that you’re spying on them and watching what they do to the minute detail. But it does mean seeing when they’re online, and which apps or software they’re using. Telling your staff that you have this level of oversight will encourage them to work harder for your firm.
New Technologies
All of your workers will have been getting used to remote working at different rates. Your younger workers, who are more likely to be digitally confident and aware of different apps on the Internet, will have adjusted quickly. Older employees may well have struggled to get up to speed for weeks, and even months. Your job, this winter, is to get everyone working slickly on the same technologies.
This doesn’t necessarily mean falling back on the tech that you’ve been using so far. Indeed, there’s been a rush from software developers to release smart work-from-home tech this year – some of it well worth engaging with. It’s worth keeping abreast of the best work from home tools or remote work tools, through online reading, to know which will be of use to your firm.
Motivation
It’s been a long year by anybody’s standards. The summer felt a little stolen away by the virus, and many of the events that we look forward to were cancelled this year. The ‘Groundhog Day’ mentality has seeped into daily life, and every day has felt a little too similar to the one before, especially for home workers who are now spending nearly every hour of the week at home.
It’s partially a business leader’s responsibility to inject some joy and passion back into proceedings – and you can do this by scheming behind the scenes on how best to motivate and inspire your workers. Perhaps you’ll create a pot that you add to each week until the virus crisis is over – and then you’ll spend the savings on a huge group party. Or maybe you’ll add smaller incentives and rewards to keep spirits up in your team. The choice is yours.
Get your team remote working like a group of pros with the tips offered above.
