Working From Home. How to manage your transition effectively.
The last couple of weeks have seen an extraordinary news cycle play out with Covid19, or as it’s more widely known, Corona. It seems that every day there is a new level of guidance, and self-isolation or work from home (WFH), is now a term in everyone’s vocabulary.
We wanted to provide our thoughts and advice on how you can make this transition, whilst still running your business effectively.
Home office setups
Telstra has announced that from the 19th of March 2020, all home broadband customers will receive unlimited data, whilst mobile customers will receive a data boost. Optus has also announced data boosts for their mobile customers.
For many employees, working from home is a new experience, so it’s important to support their setup to allow them to be most productive. This may involve letting employees using company assets, such as monitors, to support a home office on a short term basis.
Encourage daily check-ins with your staff. This only needs to be 15mins, but covering topics;
This is what I’m working on today
This is what I need help with
This is my availability for the day due to other factors (i.e. child care, caring for the elderly)
Encourage all participants to turn on their video, so you can see how they are coping with the transition. Remind them that everyone is in the same boat, and if there is a child that happens to jump into a video call, introduce them to team members and foster an inclusive environment.
Technical accessibility
Access to the right communication tools & technologies is key. Consideration needs to be given to things like your landline and desk phones, access to the corporate network, data loss prevention, how do you manage those?
With a tool such as Converse, you can provide your employees with a handset which will receive their usual phone calls and secure access to the company network leveraging their home internet connectivity. You can scale this up and down depending on how long you need to support WFH or an employee’s self-isolation. Meeting tools, such as the Communicator App, allow you to conduct online meetings, and instant messaging between team members, ensuring that people still have access to the right team members at the right time.
The addition of multi-factor authentication ensures that system access is only granted to the right people, ensuring that whilst your team works remotely, everything is still secure.
Expectations
Finally, it’s important that expectations are set as to what working from home looks like for your organisation. What times do you expect your employees to be available online? What does flexibility look like for those people who have children home from school? What are the dos and don’ts? How do they communicate if they are taking a break for lunch?
These are all things that we take for granted when people are in the office because you can see when they’re not at their desk, but remote working changes that visibility.
Want help?
This transition doesn’t need to be overwhelming. There are many different technology solutions available to your business to support this transition, and we’re here to help you choose the right one. We don’t know what the next few weeks will hold, and the guidance that may come out, but we’re all in this together.
Give the team a call on 1300 RIGAIT (744 248) or drop us an email admin@realinnovationgroup.com and start the conversation.
