At MyRhline, our teams have been practicing remote work for a long time and are accustomed to working from home, collaborating with our clients and adapting to their working conditions and environment. In order to work effectively in remote work, we have established a framework, tools, common sense, and here is our recipe. This article is not meant to remind you of the law; the goal is to advise you as best as possible to support your teams.
Organize your remote work environment
It is important to be able to advise employees and explain how to work from home. Not everyone is suited for remote work. Contrary to what you might think, many employees are also opposed to it. This may seem fundamental, but it is important that it works and establishes a work discipline, namely, as much as possible, that the employee can:
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#1 Organize a space where the employee can work from home during the day. If the employee has a room they already use as an office, that is of course ideal. If not, they should be able to set up their workstation during the day and put it away once work is done. It is important to maintain a social distance between work and private life, and in this regard, when you have finished your remote workday, remember to store your files, computers, and ensure you can disconnect normally. If you leave your work things behind, you will not be able to make the psychological cut.
#2 The second point is the notion of time; when working from home, the concept of time is different. In fact, there is no commuting time, no walk after work before returning home, so there is no “decompression lock” between your private space and your workspace. You are directly at work in a minute, so it is important to have a schedule, with break times, lunch hours, and of course a start and end time, or a start and end action plan to carry out. In remote work, your day is not necessarily linear.
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Use the right tools
No remote work is possible without maintaining communication with colleagues and managers, and for this, we have many tools that make remote work possible. At MyRhline, we use Slack daily to communicate with colleagues and partners, allowing us to chat, call, video conference, share data, etc. There are other possible solutions; choose yours!
For the rest, we are very fond of the Google suite, which we have always used (gmail, meeting place to organize our remote meetings with partners and clients, file sharing, etc.). For our graphic creations, we use tools like Canva, which allow us to work and share our results within the team.
In short, digital technology facilitates the implementation of remote work; the only constraint or limitation is the Internet connection. Perhaps you could suggest to your employees today to renew their Internet subscription?
Setting realistic expectations for employees and support
To maximize your chances of success in remote work, do not overload your teams in the first week of remote work. Give them time to adapt to this new way of working and to organize themselves.
By setting realistic goals that are appropriate for the situation, you are not establishing relentless control over remote work; we advise you to support your collaborators, encourage them, and help them in case of difficulties. You need to adopt a motivating and encouraging approach towards your teams.
It is therefore important to listen to them and regularly check in to see if they are facing difficulties (difficulties can be of various types: feelings of isolation, technical issues, equipment problems…) and to see how to help them.
Are our children not in school and need parental support to follow online classes? Is there only one computer at home? By adapting employees’ schedules to this constraint, a day does not necessarily have to be reduced to traditional office hours, like 9:00 – 12:00 / 14:00 – 18:00, showing flexibility and adaptability.
Maintain and nurture social connections
One of the limitations of remote work is the loss of social connections and the feeling of loneliness. To remedy this, organize “meeting points” via video conference; it is important to see each other and not just hear each other. Eye contact is very important; we are in a Latin country, and we need to see the faces of our interlocutors and their expressions. Nothing prevents you from having a drink with your colleagues over video conference or Facetime at the end of the day.
Leave no one behind; if possible, ask management and human resources to call employees at least once a week, simply to support them, encourage them, thank them, and listen to them. It is extremely important that employees feel supported and are not left alone at home. Imagine internal communication campaigns; be inventive and step away from usual formality and conventionalism; a little lightness won’t hurt anyone.
HRD: If you want to share what you have implemented to support your company’s employees and share your best practices, contact us here.
Christophepatte
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