The work-from-home aka WFH – although was considered as a pointless and ineffective practice – has just became a “real thing” with the current global corona virus pandemic, and more and more companies globally are being forced into setting up WFH for their employees. In Qatar also, as part of ensuring everyone’s safety, the government has advice employers to cut short their office staff to 20% and asked the 80% to work from home. Although the measure is well appreciated in fighting the corona virus, many are still searching in the darkness on how to make sure their employees are working efficiently or how to ensure the proper working environment for them. Thanks to ever-evolving technologies like VPN, Skype, Facetime, Google Hangouts, Zoom, various authenticator apps, and cloud computing—not to mention texting and email—it’s no longer necessary to be in an office full-time to be a productive member of the team. In fact, many kinds of work can be done just as effectively, if not more so, from a home office.
Whether you or your staffs are working remotely one day per week (or more) or full-time—by choice or because of a health scare or weather event—it’s important to ensure that you are set up to be productive. This includes having a designated workspace with the right technology; ways of dealing with kids, pets, and other potential disruptions; and a schedule that allows for the social contact and stimulation that ordinarily comes from being in a workplace with others. Here are strategies and tips to setup or make use of a remote working environment.
As an employer do you need your employees to do a eight-to-five schedule, or is there flexibility? Do you want your staffs to work on public Wi-Fi? Which tech tools might you need, such as Zoom for video conferencing, Slack or Microsoft Teams for group chats, or Trello for project management? As an employer, it’s important that all your employees are well aware about the ground rules and ensures your staffs have the appropriate equipment, such as a laptop, as well as network access, passcodes, and instructions for remote login, including two-factor authentication and right use of the virtual private network aka VPN. Be sure to do trial runs and work out any problems that might impede your work.
As an employee you should have a private, quiet space for your work, if not a home office. If you can, separate your work area from your personal spaces and use it just for work, not for other activities.
Internet will be a must if you are working from home, not to mention Internet being the basic requirement these days. You might need a high speed connection if you are using several applications or cloud computing. Further to this, if you are connecting to your workplace network using VPN or using firewall services, your Internet speed will have to be even more to work without interruption. To add more to this if you have more Internet users at your home your remote connection is likely to be disconnected or interrupted. As an employer you will need to make sure your staff has proper Internet connection at home. As an employee working at home, it is advised to work closer to your Wi-Fi router or use the Ethernet connection.
There are ton of mobile applications both in Android play store and iOS app store that can help you with your work from home. Using apps like Google Keep and ToDoist for taking and keeping notes, Calendar apps for creating reminders, Zoom,WhatsApp and Skype apps for making video and audio calls, and various other cloud based SaaS apps like Hubspot for managing work force and project can help you improve your team’s work from home efficiency.
Work from home can turn into a disaster if not properly planned and executed – and the most important part of it is the right IT infrastructure. You will need to select the right remote working solutions, the right VPN and Firewall and essential software to collaborate with your team. Besides these you might want to make sure your IT setup never fails you. With the right IT team as a backbone for you, you can make sure you have implemented the right work from home practice for your company.
Bottom Line: Work from home can be overwhelming and may seem a little inefficient at first – but with the right kind of solution you can even achieve more productivity through WFH. And with the corona virus pandemic leaving us not choice, it is better to work from home if your job does not demand lot of collaboration or social support.
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