Six Helpful Tips for Working from Home
At Category One Consulting, we have always had the flexibility to choose where we work when we aren’t meeting with other team members or clients. As a result, we have all been doing a fair amount of our work from home for quite some time. Given the recent Covid-19 pandemic and the need for social distancing, many more people are being allowed or forced to work from home. This is obviously a huge adjustment for people that aren’t used to working remotely. In this blog, you’ll find six useful tips to help you be more efficient and productive while working at home.
Many more people are being allowed or forced to work from home. This is obviously a huge adjustment for people that aren’t used to working remotely.
Create a Dedicated Workspace. If at all possible, establish a dedicated space in your home where you’ll be performing most of your work. Your workspace could be a home office, dining room table, or a desk in the corner of one of the less-used rooms in your house. Regardless of where you are working, make sure you have everything you need to perform the tasks of your job, and don’t hesitate to ask your employer to provide those things for you. They should be motivated to help you be productive and work efficiently. Having a dedicated workplace can really help you get in a mindset to work, and it also helps create separation from work at the end of the day. This is critical, as it’s easy to feel as if you are always working when you can constantly access your work at home.
Establish a Routine. Working at home often comes with some flexibility to decide when you will work and establishing a regular routine can be really helpful. If your employer allows you to set your own work schedule, find something that works for you and stick to it. I always try to get up early and start working at the same time every day, and I try to get most of my work done by mid-afternoon. Other people may prefer to start later in the day and work into the evening. Some may even prefer to work several hours in the morning, take a break, and then return to work later at night. This kind of schedule could work well for someone with non-work obligations that must be attended to during the middle of the day. It doesn’t really matter what your routine is as long as you make some effort to follow it. By doing so, you’ll train your body and your mind to be ready to work at the times that make the most sense for you.
Take Regular Breaks. When establishing a routine, make sure you build breaks into your work schedule. Sitting in a chair and staring at a computer screen for hours on end can be hard on the body. Without the distractions that come with working in an office, it can be easy to forget to get up and move around every once in a while. To combat this, build a few breaks in your schedule throughout the day, and make sure you are leaving your workspace during them. Take time to eat lunch away from your desk or consider taking a quick walk around the block. These planned interruptions to your workday are not only healthy for you, they may also help you be more productive. Getting outdoors and doing physical activity have been shown to increase creativity, and I’m always amazed how often I come back from a short break with new ideas about or approaches to a project I previously felt stuck on.
Establish Expectations for Housemates. Those of us who live with others may need to establish expectations for the people or pets we live with to avoid unnecessary interruptions to our work. This is especially likely to be true right now, as you may have a spouse, children, or roommates who are also home during the day. To avoid distractions, talk to the people you live with to make sure they are aware of your work routine and establish some ground rules. For example, when my office door is shut, my wife and daughter know that I’m not to be disturbed unless it’s an emergency. I also let them know when I have conference calls with clients, so they know to keep noise to a minimum. Establishing these sorts of expectations may be more or less difficult depending upon who your housemates are but doing so can make working at home much easier.
Focus on Communication. Communication can certainly be a challenge when everyone is working remotely. For example, it’s really easy to get into a habit of doing all of your communication via email when working from home, but email is not always the most efficient way to communicate. Don’t forget to also take advantage of chat functions, phone calls, and video conferencing. So much gets lost in written-communication, and it can be extremely helpful for people to be able to hear your voice and see your face. If you are supervising people and you don’t already do so, now is the perfect time to start having regularly scheduled 1 on 1s with your employees. In general, it’s important to communicate often and be intentional about how you are communicating when working remotely.
Make Time to Socialize with Coworkers. Finally, it’s still important to take time to socialize with your coworkers. For those who are transitioning from working in an office to working at home, the lack of interaction with coworkers can be especially difficult. We spend a lot of time with the people we work with, and many of us are fortunate enough to call them our friends. Create occasions for you and your team to socialize by taking time during meetings to talk about personal news, using chat functions throughout the day to connect, or hosting a virtual happy hour so people can visit about things unrelated to work. Taking the time to do these things will help ensure your team works well together from their homes now and foster greater team cohesion when things return to normal.
These six tips should be helpful if you are one of the many people who are now being asked to work from home for the first time. However, now is also a good time for seasoned work-from-home professionals to reassess their usual practices and habits. Having children, spouses, or others at home during the day may challenge the routines you previously had in place, and even the most introverted of us may find a world with little to no face-to-face meetings or communication especially isolating. If you have any questions about how you or your employees can make the most of working from home, feel free to reach out!
In closing, it’s important to say that those of us who are able to work from home during the Covid-19 pandemic are incredibly fortunate. When we grow frustrated about our new work situations, we ought to take a moment to think about those who are unable to work from home including healthcare workers, first-responders, people who manufacture and move goods, and people who stock store shelves. These individuals are putting themselves and their families at risk every day to keep things as normal as possible for the rest of us. Finally, we also ought to think of those who have lost a job or are unable to work. During times like these, it’s easy to become focused on our own situations. Remember there are almost always people who would change places with us if given the chance, and now is the perfect time to take account of all the things we have to be thankful for.