By Swatil Binte Mahmud, Blogger, Lava Protocols
Do you remember a time when we left our houses without worrying about being killed by a deadly virus? I remember I was in a very crowded location when the first case of COVID-19 was identified in China. I was traveling, going from one place to another, meeting new people, living life, and all that. You know the usual. And then everything stopped. I came back home and everyone was in panic mode. At work, we did not know whom to trust and who to stay away from. Meetings were awkward, where we did not know how to properly maintain social distancing. Oh, don’t forget sanitizers and toilet paper; remember when people started rationing them and stores ran out of them?
The biggest blow hit when our office management told us to stop coming to work. What were we going to do? How are we going to do the meetings which could have been an email, from home? For almost 2 months my team and I ineptly joined various online platforms to communicate and hold long and boring meetings. Those meetings did bring back memories from the golden days, where attending such meetings also meant free food and good coffee. Anyway, you get my point. We were not ready or trained to be working from home.
The shift to work from home came as a big shock to companies where many even failed to keep up and dissolved. Are you one of them? Is your company on the verge of its untimely demise? Are you struggling to keep up with working from home? Then keep reading because I am going to share some tips for your company and your employees on how to excel and enjoy working from home. Also, let us learn more about the importance of organizations being ready for unplanned remote working, in case,we have another pandemic or a zombie outbreak.
Review Plans
Now is a good time to reflect on what did not work and what worked for your organization. Good planning will only be effective if your team has the capacity to implement it properly. One thing successful organizations did in the pandemic was to introduce new methodologies in the organization’s planning process. Also, aligning your team across your business and planning can bring you steps closer to achieving targets and goals.
Salesforce uses a robust planning framework, the V2MOM tool for successful planning and implementation. V2MOM stands for Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, and Measures. The V2MOM tool will help to align your teams around the desired direction of your organization. It will also provide momentum and clarity about business goals and objectives to all your employees.
Empower Your Teams
Once your teams are aligned and you have directed them in the right direction, you need to equip them with effective tools and easy access to the right data. A customer relationship management (CRM) platform will give your teams an effective channel to communicate across teams, within the organizations, and with external stakeholders. Customer 360 by Salesforce is one of the revolutionary CRM platforms. It will allow your employees to choose the most appropriate format, platform, time, and content to effectively complete their tasks.
Embrace and Accept Change
A survey with 1,022 respondents was conducted online via a bespoke polling tool in the US. In that survey, it was found that nearly 3 in 10 employees talked about resigning their job if they were no longer allowed to work remotely. Another survey by Gartner found that 82% of the respondents who are organization heads plan on allowing remote working at least some of the time and a stark 47% mentioned that they want to allow full-time work from home option for employees going forward.
There have been lots of challenges in the past couple of years. But with these challenges, immense opportunity arose too. If you can successfully align your plans with your employees, give them the right tools, and organize training and workshops, you can elevate workplace productivity and increase motivation among employees.
Now that you know that times have changed and you need to evolve too, you also know that work from home is here to stay in the foreseeable future. So, I am going to go ahead and share some tips on how to work from home and make the most of remote working!
Increase Productivity
When you work from home, you have the opportunity to create your ideal work environment. You control the air cond temperature, noise level, and lighting to your liking. The freedom to make such small choices can lead to bigger differences in the quantity and quality of your work. Cuddling and playing with my cats between meetings really gave my brain the breaks it needed to recharge.
Set Office Hours and Stick to Them
It is important for your mental health and productivity to plan ahead your regular work hours. Otherwise, like me at the beginning of the pandemic, you will be glued to your laptop till late night. Also, do not forget to inform your manager and colleagues of your schedule. Creating a work schedule will also ensure that you are not consistently working long hours, which will also support your general work-life balance.
Plan Your Day
You will need to plan out your day’s work from home successfully. You can set personal and work goals, create to-do lists, write down your daily schedule, and schedule your breaks. The more structure and routine you build for your remote working days, you will actually get more done and lessen your chances of being overworked and stressed out.
Eat and Sleep Right
The COVID-19 pandemic made us realize how before the pandemic we stopped caring about our health and only focused on working. Since the virus came into our lives, we have been more cautious and mindful of our health. Please eat right, don’t stay up too late, and go enjoy the sun sometimes! Life is too short to be glued to our screens, I am saying this while I am glued to my screen. But hey, I can see the rays of soft sunshine from my window and I am going to go bathe in it now! Bye!
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