Successful Homeworking During The Coronavirus Outbreak — An Employers Guide
With the current Coronavirus situation, lots of employers like you are now having to think about having their staff work from home. I thought it was worth putting something together to help guide you through this process.
So what makes me qualified to talk about this? Firstly, I’ve worked remotely for most of my working life. Secondly, in 2014 I made the decision in my previous technology business that we’d get rid of our office, and all try remote working from home. After spending a few initial months figuring out what worked (and what didn’t!) we never looked back.
We all found this new way of working to be brilliant in terms of both flexibility and productivity. So here’s a brief guide that includes advice and some of the things to think about when your workforce needs to work remotely.
Is It Actually Possible?
The most obvious question is if all your employees can actually work remotely. For most industries, people can still work, even if not as they would do normally. There are of course exceptions to this especially where people need to travel and physically be on site.
If people aren’t able to work in their usual roles, what else can they do? Don’t just think they can’t work at all as most people have many skills. Speak to your employees 1 to 1 to find out more about their other skills and how they can still help the business. Getting them to document and work on processes and possible improvements for their usual work is a good short term strategy. This gives you some time to figure out a way forward and will be useful for the future too.
Whatever you do decide on, do consider any HR issues and get professional advice on any big changes or removal of roles though.
Equipment and Workspace
Linked to the point above, do all employees have all the tools they’ll need to carry out their role from home? For example, do they already have a laptop? Do they have any required software installed? Do they have access to all systems and information they need? These are questions that are best to ask your employee themselves as they are the ones who know what they actually need.
Another big consideration is to ask about their working environment at home. Will they have a dedicated room with a desk etc that they can use? This may be the ideal but of course is not always possible for a lot of people. Is there somewhere they can use as a temporary setup such as a small desk in an existing bedroom?
What I’ve found is that most people work way better in a dedicated work area rather than just from their dining room table or sofa. The quieter and more distraction free this area is the better it is too. Talk to them about this and see what ideas they have.
They will no doubt need to have client or internal team calls too so a quiet area really helps with this. Of course, both them and you may need to make compromises and just do the best you can in the circumstances. If there simply isn’t somewhere quiet for them to make calls, they may have to think outside the box and only make/take calls from inside their car on the driveway!
Define Expectations
When people aren’t physically together, communications become even more important than usual. Letting your employees know what is to be expected of them and how things will work is massively important to the success of remote working. Firstly, speak to them on the phone/video call or in-person to find our their specific circumstances.
Afterwards, you should have a good idea of any limitations so you can put together a simple proposal for their new working arrangements. This can be as simple as a one-page outline of how things will work and what is expected of them. This can save lots of (incorrect) assumptions on both sides.
This proposal should include the following as a minimum:
- Working hours/days.
- More information about their workspace.
- Expected response times.
- How to report/when to report/who to report to.
- An outline of any changes in their role.
You should BOTH be happy with this proposal and agree that it is how you’ll work in the immediate future.
Security
You need to make sure that everything is as secure as possible. This applies to both physical security such as laptops not being left out on display overnight, as well as digital security. As a minimum, all computers should be password protected, have anti-virus software, and all links into any of your software systems should be secure.
This is a pretty big topic which really depends on your exact situation and systems, so do consult a security specialist (either internally or externally) to make sure this is done properly. The last thing you want at this already testing time is a security breach!
Communications
As I mentioned above, great communications are vital so don’t leave this to chance. You should define what the primary methods should be (Slack, phone, email, Skype, Zoom, Whatsapp etc) and make sure that anything required for this such as software installation and/or user creation is done, tested, and employee contact details distributed throughout the company. Having a new “employee directory” that includes all this info that everyone has access to is a good idea.
One of the best tools in my opinion for all internal communications to go through is Slack. Do look into it yourself but in brief, it allows all employees to join different chat channels on a per project or company wide basis (or whatever you define). This is great for quick day to day questions and answers, sharing documents and images, and even calling each other. The beauty is that all communications are in one place and managers people can check the status of things without having to interrupt people or wait for responses.
As well as the day to day communications, I also highly recommend the following couple of activities:
Either at the start or end of the day have a quick 5–10 minute catchup call between employees and their manager. This should only be a quick status update to say where they are with their planned tasks and if everything is on track. If not, then this can be addressed and plans changed or help given. This daily catchup really helps highlight any issues as well as keeping daily conversations going.
In addition to the daily calls, I recommend a weekly video call with the whole team. This doesn’t need to be in depth but the various departments (sales, marketing, development, accounts etc) should give a brief overview of what has happened in the last week and what key things they’ll be focusing on in the upcoming week. A couple of tools I’d recommend for this are Skype and Zoom.
This full company team meeting really helps keep the team spirit alive and helps everyone know what is going on throughout the company. My personal preference is to do this on Monday morning as it reminds people what happened before the weekend and also sets up the week nicely.
Constant honest communication is the key to making this new way of working a success.
Flexibility
This is another key point that is often forgotten. Your team are probably just as new to this as you are so do cut them some slack, and do be flexible. There will no doubt be teething problems and more people management to do. Try to keep things simple and ensure that everyone knows what and how they should be doing it.
The current situation with Coronavirus is constantly changing and other issues may come up. If schools do close then your employees may then have children at home which isn’t ideal. You need to be prepared to change the way things work if big changes like this happen. As everyone will be in the same boat, being able to hear children in the background of a call may not be an issue as others will understand the situation.
Finally
Hopefully, the above guide gives you an idea of some of the things you need to think about when it comes to taking your company remote, and people working from home. If you do have any specific questions, do feel free to ask me though. My email address is richard@tenminutemarketing.co.uk
I’m also currently writing a guide for employees who are new to homeworking which I’ll add to this article when complete. Sending your employees a link to this will hopefully help them too.
Thanks
Richard
