The arrival of the coronavirus (COVID-19) has forced many leaders to come up with remote work strategies for their teams. While some may have worked at home from time to time, it’s different when everyone is out of the office and no one knows when you’ll return.
How can you support your employees by keeping them focused and perhaps even give them a welcome distraction from the news of the virus? Consider these actionable tips:
Create Routines
Top performers like athletes and actors have routines that can shield them from stress. There’s a comfort that comes from knowing what’s next.
Your employees may have had routines at work but now that they’re out of the office, those routines may be gone.
See if you can provide some structure to the day. For instance, maybe you set up times to touch base with employees or teams, rather than randomly decide to reach out.
In a chaotic situation, routines can provide stability.
Have a Team Meeting
By phone or video, have a daily opportunity to address your company or department. This virtual team huddle is one of the best remote work strategies because it’s a chance to prioritize goals and troubleshoot challenges.
This doesn’t have to be a long meeting. It’s probably best to have it at the same time every day.
Important Question to Ask
As a TV news reporter, I learned the question, “Anything else?” at the end of the interview, was very powerful. Sometimes an interview subject had something else to say but would not bring it up unless prompted.
Your employees may have ideas they want to share or concerns to discuss but they won’t bring them up unless you ask. Ask the question at the end of your phone or video conversations.
Even if people don’t have anything else to talk about, they’ll appreciate being asked.
Add Office Hours to Your Remote Work Strategies
Under normal circumstances, leaders may feel like interruptions hurt their productivity. Out of the office environment, you may feel like the constant and perhaps increased flow of email and calls are keeping you from focusing on your work.
You may want to create some barriers in your day and one type is to have office hours, like a college professor.
This would see you have certain publicized time frames during the day when you would be free to answer questions and respond to messages. If something is urgent, then it’s okay to reach out to you.
Otherwise, your time is protected and the interruptions are controlled. Employees can also group questions into one big email, rather than send you messages throughout the day.
Things Will Take Longer
In the office, you know where things are and they can be accessed easily. While working from home, that situation may change.
That password that’s on your work bulletin board, may not be accessible and you’ll have to figure out how to get it. Or that little used document that is buried somewhere in your computer network may suddenly become incredibly important.
Be prepared for these little challenges that will take extra time. It’s frustrating but understandable.
Create a Water Cooler
While water cooler conversations sometimes make me nervous because they can last a long time and hurt productivity, some employees become energized by them. And they can serve as an opportunity to network and exchange ideas.
Can you create a virtual water cooler? At a certain time, can employees log into a group meeting, through services like zoom.us, that allows them to reconnect.
This can be a facilitated discussion where people share best practices from working at home, as well as ask for help with any challenges they are facing. This is more of a social gathering, than a formal team huddle.
Make sure everyone has an opportunity to contribute as you want your introverts to have a chance to share.
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