As part of social distancing, people have been asked to work from home where possible. Working from home can be tough when you’re in the same room for hours on end so we’ve put together a guide for surviving working from home – these tips and techniques are used by our team and we hope you find it as effective as we do.
Keep a routine
We humans are creatures of habit meaning if something changes we don’t tend to like it.
Get up at the same time you normally would so your body keeps up its cycle. In your usual transit time, try reading a book or brushing up on a skill you’ve been meaning to work on.
When you finally “get to work” make sure you’re still taking the precious time to make yourself a coffee and make sure to take your usual lunch break. The break between work will help to wind down throughout the day. For more guidance on keeping stressing levels down read our guide for social media managers.
Keep Internal Meetings Going
Communication is the key to success, especially during these difficult times. If you and your team are working from home, you need to make sure you are remaining in contact with each other. If you hold a weekly meeting, there’s no reason you can’t keep doing so there are plenty of platforms you can use to hold meetings with multiple people at one time over video and microphone.
If your company uses the G suite you might have heard of their video call platform: Hangout Meets. The platform is suited for all kinds of businesses and is available to download as app on your phone if using your computer isn’t your thing. An alternative to Meets is Zoom. Zoom is used by various industries such as education and finance because it can be used to hold meetings, conferences, phone calls and more.
Create a group chat for your team
Emailing is still a key form of communication for any office but you have to think – would you email this bit of info or turn round in your chair and tell them? This is why it’s important to have a platform in place where you and your team can have a place to chat and feel connected. From asking deadline questions to sharing memes about being inside for the tenth day in a row, these group chats will bring your team together.
Slack is a great platform for internal communication. You can set up various channels where all the relevant people can be involved and have private conversations all whilst being able share documents and images.
Alternatively, Microsoft Teams is also a great way to keep your team communicating during social distancing. If your team uses the Office Suite, this would be the best route for you as the platform is geared towards Microsoft products.
Keep track of any projects you have going on
It can be easy to lose track of the projects you’ve got going on when people are working from home and trying to look after other members of their household. Despite a project being brought up in emails and meetings, they can be overlooked or forgotten. Using a separate platform to keep track of projects can keep everyone on task.
Scoro is a platform that allows you to create projects and track how much time has spent on it, who’s been working on it and what tasks need doing. You can also track where each project is at in its life cycle from “waiting on client” to “pending internal review”.
Asana is another great platform that allows you to create projects and tasks. You can keep track of the projects and create teams relevant for each task.
