How to improve productivity for you and your team while working from home

The ‘new normal’ is really starting to settle in, and businesses that don’t keep up are going to struggle to attract and retain talent. More and more job postings are listing (as a headline) work from home flexibility whether it be fulltime work from home or a hybrid approach.

Success for a work from home system would look to be beneficial to the employee, while maintaining or improving the productivity. Maintaining retention and engagement levels should also be a key factor.

Manage Expectations

Firstly, look at how you monitor and manage productivity. If you currently measure this by how long people are at the office, then you may be in for a challenge here.

Make sure you set expectations for working from home around attendance at meetings, availability, responsiveness and how performance will be managed.

Ensure your management team are ready for the change and understand what they are giving up (being able to see staff in the office).

It’s easier to see when staff are in the office how hard they are working, to know if they need more or less work. This is similar for peers as well; they can see when others in their team are overloaded and can help. This can be more easily hidden or unknown when working remotely, so ensure you find a solution for this that works for your team.

Remember that you never get 100% efficiency when staff are in the office either.

Foster and Facilitate Wellbeing through Flexible Working

Consider how you can alter working times without negatively impacting customer experience or collaboration.

A 3/2 working week is looking like the new normal, and from my experience is a really good middle ground for many people.

Can your team take longer breaks during the day while working at home to get daytime chores done (washing, mowing, gardening), and then work back later to make up the time when their mind is more engaged?

Does working from home allow parents to attend more school events or pick up/drop off kids?

For certain, some of these things are going to impact on availability for meetings or urgent issues, but finding a balance is very important.

The Right Equipment

Check with the team that their workspace at home is sufficient.

You may need to provide chairs, desks, monitors, internet, mobile phone, keyboards/mice, headsets.

Remember, if you are saving money on rent, cooling, electricity by having staff work from home, you could spend some extra here to make their home working environment better.

If staff are hybrid working, ensure they have a standard environment when working from home or remote, so that they aren’t struggling to be as efficient at home rather than at work. You may need to get the right tools and technology to help with this.

Manage Security

If you allow staff to work on their home computers, are these safe and secure? Do they have effective antivirus and firewalls?

Are they shared with others in the house?

If you provide laptops, are these protected with encryption and strong passwords that will protect your business and data if they are stolen or lost?

Staff working at home may have your intellectual property, client and price lists, or other sensitive data on their home computer that may not have the same physical security as your office.

Do they print out work documents and keep them on the kitchen table at home?

Manage Performance

Schedule daily stand-up meetings to find out how busy people are, and what they are working on.

Set metrics for performance such as hours billed, items processed, content created, or similar. Monitor these things over time to look for any change.

Survey the staff to find out how they are handling their environment and workload and look for improvements.

Set up times and encourage collaborative exercises and/or social discourse to keep the team comradery and morale high.

It’s very easy to become disjointed/disconnected from the team when working remotely for too long, so it’s important to look for ways to engage and motivate the team.

On the flipside, watch for people putting in too many hours; this will lead to burn out and is not healthy.

Keep People on Track, Focused, Engaged and Part of the Team

Remote working can allow you to geographically space out your team, improve individual wellbeing and access workforces in other regions, but you need to find a way to build and maintain your culture.

Teams grow and improve as they work closely together, and this can be hard in a fully remote setting.

If you reduce office hours, you lower the amount of hallway meetings, lunchroom chats, coffee discussions and general socialising that builds strong teams and personal attachments.

It’s important to find ways to bring this into your remote working model.

Some tips we’ve tried with great success:

• Increase the number of social events outside of business hours.
• Schedule ‘office days’ where as many people come in on the same day as possible to get some buzz happening.
• Friday afternoon knock off video conference drinks.
• Make a point of going out to lunch or going for coffee with the team when they are together.
• Let the stand-up or regular catch-up meetings spill over into talking about the weekend or home life rather than regimenting it to keep it short.

Just remember, if you are working from home most of the time, meeting days in the office, or going into the city to work from time to time, are a treat.

Some things you may not have considered as bonuses of improved teleworking:

• Encourage your staff to take a ‘working holiday’. Where they work from a holiday destination and can work all day, and explore a new city/town by night
• Hire people from another city/town/state/country and expand your business. We work for many clients all around Australia and South-East Asia with ease from home already!
• If you can build a working model, you can hire talent from anywhere, and extend the time zones that you can support.

Call us on 1300 642 267 or email support@miacorit.com.au if you’d like to have an obligation free chat about how MIACOR IT can help you improve productivity for your team while working from home.

‍