WORK FROM HOME: A SIMPLE GUIDE FOR MANAGERS

Whether you’re ready or not, your team is probably going to have to consider remote working in the near future. If you don’t have a work-from-home policy, it’s time you considered one immediately with the spread of Covid-19 globally. 

As a manager, you’ll have to consider the following:

1. Strategies to help your team stay connected
2. Best practices for working from home

STRATEGIES TO STAY CONNECTED

As people spread out and work individually from home, teams tend to lose that energy of being around each other and drift. THIS IS NORMAL. It’s not easy to focus, with the many distractions of being at home, so be considerate. It’s up to managers to create opportunities for their team to catch up and riff off of each other.

Now, most of us would not have in place a communication tool that’ll help us bridge the communication gap between teammates separated by proximity. If you have one, yay, if you don’t maybe it’s time to look for one. Until such time even a group conference chat on Skype might help. Trello, Jira, Basecamp are easy-to-use task management tools if you don’t have a sophisticated one. 

1. Schedule a team-wide standup call. This will allow team members to share what they’re working on and ask for any help wanted from their teammates. Assign a team member to take notes and share via email or a communication tool you may be using. This’ll allow everyone to see action items and follow-up required. 
2. Encourage people to take advantage of face-to-face video calls instead of messaging. A good rule of thumb is if you have to explain something via messaging and your colleagues don’t understand, choose to get on a quick video conference call and get everyone on the same page
3. Create office hours on your calendar for your team to connect with you to ask questions and give feedback.
4. Ask teammates to send daily morning updates on what they’re working on in the team channel.

A few tools you can use depending on your requirement.

• Zoom for video conferencing
• Jira for project tracking
• Google Suite: Docs, Sheets and Slides for collaborating on and sharing documents, spreadsheets and slides. As a freelancer, this is my GO-TO when I collaborate and work with clients

BEST PRACTICES WHEN WORKING-FROM-HOME

Important reminder: LEARN TO LET GO AND TRUST YOUR TEAM. If you’re a micro-manager, working from home isn’t going to work so great for you and your team. It’d be good to re-examine your management style. If you don’t have the tools in place to enable remote working, look at the tools that’ll help you.

1. Create and commit to office hours. This will allow team members to create a work environment and be prepared. It’ll also allow you and your team to schedule downtime to maintain a work-life balance.
2. When sending questions or requests, let the recipient(s) know if a request requires immediate attention or if it can wait.
3. During video meetings, have people who want to speak raise their hand so people can see that someone wants to talk.
4. If you’re using a task-managing tool, update them to share your top priorities or show what you’re currently working on.

Are your teams working remotely yet? What kind of tools do you use? I’d really like to know.