Businesses are back to almost normal operations, but flexible work arrangements are here to stay. Many benefits come with working remotely, like lower operational costs for employees and employers and better work-life balance. It’s a change that’s more than welcome to take up permanent residency. Working from home has become the most viable choice to maintain industries during the pandemic. Exerting the effort to modify processes and making remote offices a new part of the present-day office is vital.
Thankfully, the significant shift towards a flexible work setup is coming along incredible but with challenges. However, employees can easily transition to being remote workers with innovative tools and thoughtfully drafted plans. To begin optimizing your business and help your staff thrive at home, learn about some imperative factors below.
Help Them Create Their Home Office
The first step to helping employees settle comfortably in their work-from-home situation is by providing them with the essentials. At the office, workers have access to computers, printers, and other equipment. But at home, at most, all they’ll have is a laptop, and maybe even one that cannot support heavy work processes.
To ensure that your personnel can perform well in their private spaces, you can provide them with computers or laptops. Include pre-installed work-relevant software and programs to help them produce superb work.
Maintain a Steady Line of Communication
Communication is one of the work necessities compromised in a flexible work arrangement. Without a consistent line of communication, it can be challenging to align goals and can even cause misunderstandings, giving way to extra work. Communicating using email is ideal for business-to-business processes and sending documents to other professionals.
Still, it’s better to use more straightforward and casual apps for simple questions and catchups, such as Microsoft Teams, Skype, and Slack. These apps also offer various avenues to communicate, including company-wide announcements and video calls.
Use Programs and Software
In the traditional workplace, the most common programs used by companies are Microsoft office for creating documents and Adobe for editing and crafting visuals. But aside from those programs, you can also use other tasks and communication software to make working from home better.
Trello, Evernote, and Basecamp allow businesses to align goals by giving employees a space to update and share their finished tasks and the ones they’re working on. On the other hand, Time Doctor helps keep track of how long a worker spends on a task to help bolster their productivity.
Another thing that a work-from-home setting can put in danger is security. Most of your workers might opt to use personal PCs. Since it’s a flexible arrangement, they’ll likely use different networks, making them vulnerable to external threats. To ensure that your employees and company data remain protected, you can outsource managed IT solutions and services.
Offer Remote Training
Considering that your remote workers will deal with new technologies, they may not find it easy to navigate programs without proper assistance. So before rolling out programs that you plan to use for your staff’s WFH setup, you must train your employees.
Teach them the best ways to use new software by emailing out a PowerPoint or PDF presentation containing detailed instructions. Dissemination training about new technologies isn’t the only thing you can offer. You can also hold webinars about various subject matters and skills training. That will allow remote workers to hone or learn new skills at home.
Hold Town Halls
Communication within departments is essential, but company-wide catchups are also necessary. Every department is connected, making it crucial that you hold business-wide meetings from time to time. Town halls are common during traditional office days, with food and drinks sometimes present. It’s a gathering where people from various departments can socialize while giving relevant updates about their recent activities.
Holding virtual town halls are still achievable even when most of your employees are working from home. All you need is to invite them in a call with the communication app your business uses. It’s essential to lay out your speech and allow department heads to take the floor for seamless communication to commence.
Make Every Process Digital Friendly
Not every business is remote work-ready. Most companies still widely use paper and other traditional methods and tools to operate. These companies are potentially the ones who took the most hits during this pandemic. Months into the flexible work setup, most have shifted to digitizing processes like sending documents through email and holding meetings online.
Making your processes digital-friendly not only hastens operations but also makes them more convenient for employees. Some of the tools you need to go digital are cloud storage programs and file hosting services, like Dropbox and OneDrive.
With these ideas in mind, making the remote work setup for your employees shouldn’t be daunting. You can make the shift and experience better for them with the right strategies.