How to Make Homeworking Work During Coronavirus

Since the government recommended homeworking, where possible, during the coronavirus crisis, businesses across the UK have been adapting the way they operate.

But what challenges does working from home bring, and what’s the best way of making it work smoothly, with zero disruption to your business?

In the first of our three-part series, learn how you can make homeworking work.

Communicating with your team

Keeping the flow of communication is essential when you can no longer wander down the office, so a priority in setting your team up to work from home should be deciding how you’ll communicate.

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools to achieve this, with most people adept at using WhatsApp, FaceTime and Zoom for personal reasons.

If you want to take things further, look into business process management tools like Microsoft Teams, Asana, Monday or Trello to plan, manage and monitor your workload.

How does this look in practice?

Don’t just set it all up - put processes in place to keep everyone in touch and on task, as well as keeping spirits high.

For you, that might look like a morning video call to run through the day’s tasks, a 3PM virtual coffee break to catch up, or motivational gems posted in the work WhatsApp group throughout the day.

Make sure line managers and team leaders understand the importance of their role when working remotely - holding a team together, maintaining motivation levels and communicating effectively is the key to success.

And while emails, calls and group chats will go a long way towards supporting remote workers, consider how you could take it further. Some companies use webcasting via dedicated private YouTube channels, for example, to cascade briefings, communicate important announcements and share tips with remote workers, which can be extremely effective in pulling a geographically distant team together.

Whichever tools and processes you establish, make sure everyone understands and sticks to them for successful homeworking.

Focus on wellbeing

Workplace wellbeing has been a hot topic for the past few years, for good reason. It’s well documented that healthy, happy employees are more productive and efficient, while illness is said to cost employers an astonishing 38 days a year per employee. So, it’s important to make sure you keep the momentum going, even if your team isn’t physically together.

As a line manager or team leader, your role is more significant than ever in keeping morale high and supporting your teams.

According to research by strengths expert and author Marcus Buckingham, a simple, daily 10-minute conversation with each team member can help you achieve optimal motivation and productivity.

Crucially, this shouldn’t just focus on the task in hand. Instead, it’s important to check in on your team on a personal level. In such uncertain times as the current coronavirus pandemic, your colleagues may naturally be experiencing anxiety over their health, their families and their job status.

Make the time to be there for them in any way they need support, especially if they’re new to working from home and struggling to adjust.

The culture of trust

While many businesses already offered flexible working before the coronavirus forced millions out of the office, plenty more have an underlying mistrust of people working from home.

Of course, face-to-face contact is always going to be the best way to engage and motivate people (pandemics permitting), but there’s real value in adopting more flexible working practices - and now could be the perfect time for reluctant employers to realise that.

As a leader, your default position should be to trust the individuals in your team. Be clear about what needs to be delivered and trust your team will do the work assigned to them. If it transpires that the work hasn’t been done, then you can have a conversation about meeting expectations.

Obviously, during coronavirus, when people are juggling work and home-schooling, understand that there may be some gaps and be understanding about that. Share helpful advice for individuals about how to track their progress.

Tracking Employee Progress

Rescue Time is a time management tool that monitors how you spend your screen time, creating reports and allowing you to categorise websites as neutral, productive, distracting or very distracting. Meanwhile, Clockify is a simple time-tracking tool that allows you to time your tasks, and record everything in one place, so you can reflect on what you’ve achieved.

Both are great ways for individuals to manage their own time if they’re not used to working from home, allowing themselves set breaks and setting a timer to limit social scrolling, as well as building trust with their leaders by maintaining visibility of what they’ve worked on.

While employees shouldn’t have to prove they’re working when at home, it is a good idea, from the employee’s perspective, to update their manager on what they’ve achieved and what they need from their manager, as it helps maintain visibility.

As we work through this challenging period, and afterwards, it’s worth looking into ways of measuring the benefits of flexible working to see what works, what doesn’t and therefore which new practices you’ll continue post-coronavirus.

When homeworking isn’t possible

Not all companies can allow their employees to work from home during the coronavirus outbreak, especially those in the manufacturing, distribution and retail industries.

So, where homeworking isn’t an option, it’s vital to ensure employees who are required to come into work don’t feel like they’ve been thrown to the wolves - especially when they know their office-based colleagues are working from home.

They need to feel valued and reassured of the importance of their role in keeping the country going during challenging times, and this is even more crucial if they’re faced with daily abuse from a panic-buying public.

Again, communication is key.

Make it clear to on-site employees that protecting them and their health is paramount, and limiting the number of people on the premises will ultimately keep them safer. Keep talking and listening to their concerns. Showing transparency and respect is the best way to get through this together. 

Creating signage to remind those on-site to wash their hands, avoid handshakes and keep a safe distance from others is essential, as is speaking to your team about staying safe when travelling on public transport.

The government advice is to “avoid non-essential journeys” on public transport, but this isn’t always possible if it’s your only way to get to work.

And, while the transport industry is doing as much as it can to keep buses and trains clean, to minimise risk, why not investigate other ways you could help people get to work - like cycle hire, setting up an account with a taxi firm or loaning out company cars?

Whatever position your business is in right now, there are tangible benefits to flexible working, if it is possible, for you and your team.

With the right tools and advice, you could quickly rally your employees to come together – metaphorically speaking - and produce their best work during this challenging time, enabling you to emerge from the coronavirus crisis stronger not only as a team, but as a business.  

In the second part of this series, we’ll take a look at how to work from home with children around and part 3 focuses on examining what we might learn from this period, once we’re in a post-coronavirus world.