Empower Your Employees to Work from Home – Work from Home Checklist

COVID-19 is undoubtedly affecting the way we do business all around the world, and organizations are developing remote work strategies to remain competitive and efficient. With metropolitan areas on lock down, working from home has become the new norm, and it brings a number of advantages. According to a FlexJobs report, 80% of remote workers experience less job stress than office workers, and over 65% of respondents are more productive in their home office than at a traditional workplace. This is because people working from home have fewer interruptions and distractions, less stress from no commute, and quiet, personalized environments.

Making the most of remote work during this pandemic is all about strengthening the basics. Creating proper processes, empowering your remote workers, taking control of technicalities, and managing operations without having to visit the workplace are fundamental. The best way for organizations to start is by following a work from a home checklist like the one we created below.

How to Initiate Remote Work for Your Business

• • Implement a Communication System: The first and most important thing to consider while transitioning from managing in-house employees to a team of remote workers is a proper communication system. Communication is vital especially when employees are not present in the office, as businesses must perform daily activities such as team meetings, client calls, and video conferencing. You can incorporate chat and video conferencing software programs like Google Hangouts, Zoom, MS Teams to help you set specific targets and monitor progress.
  • Ensure Tools Availability: Provide your team with the appropriate tools and resources (hardware, software programs, etc.) for your business before opting for remote work. This is even more important if you rely on a large team to meet project deliverables. If you work on a private network, you will need all employees to install a VPN in order to access the network and collaborate.
  • Stay Connected: Staying connected with employees and proactively addressing their needs as well as their concerns will facilitate business success in the long run. Organize weekly meetings with different teams and share work-based activities with them via Google Calendar or similar programs. Synchronize your calendar and allow employees to book online meeting slots with you so you can follow up on their progress and leverage performance feedback.
  • Arrange Company Meetings: Set up virtual company-wide meetings to share work updates, celebrate milestones, allow Q&A sessions, and facilitate transparency as well as alignment within teams. Employees need to know that management values their work and care about the well-being of their team during this crisis. All it takes is proper planning, a seamless tech set up, a reliable video conferencing tool such as Zoom, and engaging content to make things worthwhile.

Remote Work Tips & Reminders

Track Progress

Remote work can only be productive if managers are keen on tracking employee progress in projects. Think about how a supervisor may approach an employee in an in house setup but, make it virtual. Use software programs such as Trello and Slack to assign tasks and deadlines, ask questions, and collaborate with team members. Managers and team leads can then follow up on each task accordingly and stay on top of every project.

Macro-Manage

Following our work from home checklist enables you to reap the benefits of macro-management, the process of providing solid parameters with consistent oversight from afar. Macro-managing is all about putting a proper management system in place and dividing workloads amongst employees. Every team member is responsible for completing a particular set of tasks, and individual contributors are allowed to perform their duties as they deem fit. This is one of the biggest reasons remote work is considered the future of the modern organizational working structure.

Managers play an integral part in this system because they must be more collaborative instead of taking on an authoritarian role. Involving team members and allowing every member to work on their own terms allows for shared accountability and improves job satisfaction.

Human Resource Management

In these uncertain times, it can be hard to keep your employees on the same page, particularly now that people are working remotely with teams across the world in a variety of settings and time zones. It is crucial that your HR department reinforces the importance of teamwork, especially in a virtual setting. Be sure that HR has the correct support systems and policies in place that allow employees to work and communicate effectively. You must all work together as an organization to reach a solution that will maximize success and efficiency across the board.

Taking these small steps and considerations into account from the beginning will certainly give your business a head start in creating a successful remote work setup that can be implemented in any similar scenario in the long run.

Final Remarks

Although remote work may prove to be a challenging transition, taking the steps highlighted above will help you easily create a solid remote work workforce and ensure smoother implementation for your enterprise while keeping our communities safe.

The possibilities associated with remote work solutions are practically endless and will dynamically change the future of work. Organizations must adopt modern technologies to accelerate digital transformation and allow for employee empowerment, better resource management, as well as improved customer experiences.

At ClearCube, we have helped numerous enterprises in different industry verticals kick-start their remote work projects. Please get in touch with us today if you want to learn more or are interested in receiving a custom design and engineered solution for your unique business needs.