COVID-19 & Working from Home
Acting remotely has become a trend in today's environment. With minimal effort to connect from just about anywhere, employees have the leverage and accessibility to work remotely, from a coffee shop, a room, and so on. More than 13 per cent of UK workers are currently employed from home, and it's not like this is a novel solution to the workforce.
While reports of coronavirus continue to grow in Britain, the UK Government has urged people to work from home. However, working remotely isn't a right that everybody has. But working from home is not an easy task due to unconditional circumstances.
Most people have to unexpectedly handle the difficulty of living at home and most of the environment self-isolating. The stores, the restaurants and other places have been changed into workplaces with computers, wire and papers.
COVID-19 is officially an epidemic and is being distributed exponentially across the United Kingdom. It is important for companies to prepare for significant changes to their processes.
Why work from home
We have seen states putting in place extreme lockdowns to try to avoid the spread of the virus, including closing down cities and limiting public transport. The purpose is to discourage people from entering the workforce, and from social mixing.
Social distancing — limiting your interaction with others. It is a crucial technique to help control down and limit the spread of this new virus. Second, introducing home-working initiatives would make it feasible for your businesses to minimise any damage from lockdowns and keep on working through the crisis.
Now you know why you need to build a remote work strategy, what strategies would you use to handle teams that work from home? Here's some tried and tested advice. These tips will help you ensure that you are successful, both in getting your job done and in preserving your mental well-being:
1.Set a Routine
Start with a specific, written timeline for the day followed by a check-in with your team. It's essential to keep you focused on the goals of an organisation.
2. Assign a specific place to your home office
One of the major obstacles when it comes to operating remotely is keeping the job and home life apart. When you're used to going to an office every day, the difference between work and home is tangible, so you want to try to recreate as much as you can with a specified physical workspace at home.
3. Working Hours
You're meant to be consistent when you're working and when you're not. Besides, if your job is cooperative, being on the same timeline as your colleagues makes things much easier.
4. Minimise distractions
Tend to limit the amount of time you spend looking at the latest updates by scheduling times every day to catch up with updates or it would be frustrating, stressful, and not good for your mental state.
It's Important to know that operating from home is not unique. What may work for me, may not work for you.
Employee perspective
Is their Internet speed good enough?
What's their limit for bandwidth?
Is there a suitable place to work in?
Organisation prospective
Do workers have enough tools to make it possible to operate from home?
Can you still use printers and do you need to file hard copies of documents?
Are you charging any extra costs?
What are your thoughts, do you think this will be the new normal?
Will you continue to work from home after the pandemic is over?