When COVID-19 forced a semblance of normality to go virtual in the spring of 2020, a significant number of companies discovered that they too could have their staff work remotely. The fear-mongering about how working from home would reduce productivity have proved to be completely unfounded.
There is some things managers can do to help improve the speed of remote work, in the first hand they should track attendance over performance.
Organize Your Tasks
Managing tasks while working remotely can feel like herding cats, but a clean desk can give your day an energy boost, cutting down on distractions of things to do and places to look while making it easier to locate what you need. Maintaining order in your computer files is just as important: the front-line barrage of Excel expressions and MS Word documents can be cut down to neat order by something as simple as a commonly agreed system of filing names and title shortcuts.
The thing is, you need to prioritise your work, too. A technique like the Eisenhower Decision Matrix can help you classify your tasks into one of four quadrants in relation to the priority levels of ‘urgent’ and ‘important’. You’ll get an immediate birds-eye view of what can be tackled today, what can wait, and what you should leave to other people.
The second ingredient is learning when not to do something: to say no, and to rest. Multitasking is productive only if you are using several limbs at once. In the brain, mental juggling is a recipe for ‘switching costs’ that reduce productivity. Do the hardest things when you have the most energy, and leave the easiest things for the end of a workday.
Collaborate With Your Team
With so much of our lives blending professional and private, good co-working shouldn’t be reduced to a bunch of emails or Slack – but should involve shaping a residential contract on when groups should be accessible and what they are expected to produce.
Setting communication norms could give remote workers the feeling that they can show up completely to their jobs – and completely shut off from them – by promulgating guidelines that lay out what is expected. An example of this could be clearer project management protocols that stipulate when a team needs to be working on a project or meeting.
While building cultures of collaboration and transparency takes time, it’s the best way to build trust across remote teams. And a culture characterised by collaboration will yield positive results if coworkers can help each other solve problems, meet project deadlines and achieve company goals.