Most countries around the world are adopting social distancing measures to contrast the diffusion of COVID-19. This is why companies had to make swift adjustments to continue their operations from remote.
Remote work or telecommuting is nothing new: many professionals and organizations have been using it long before the Coronavirus outbreak. Still, most workers are new to the situation, and the sudden change can cause some problems and disrupt the usual workflow.
Continue reading to find out some useful tips to boost productivity and increase effective communication while working remotely:
-
Adapt Your Communication Skills and Increase Productivity
Expressing yourself in a clear and concise way is important in every work environment.
However, new remote workers might have to adjust their habits and find the right balance between availability to communicate with other team members and focused productivity.
While simplicity can be hard to achieve when communicating, try to eliminate any redundant or non-necessary words while expressing your ideas with few, concise, phrases.
The best way to keep focused on your tasks while working from home is to help productivity by working with fixed work hours just like in the office (thus keeping a distinction between work hours and private time), eliminating distractions such as cell phones and social media, keeping a list of tasks for the day, and taking regular breaks.
-
Choose the Right Mode
The beauty of office work is the ability to interact with coworkers with ease. This is not always the case when working from home.
The best way to communicate with your team is by choosing the right platform for the right message: If instant messaging can be useful for quick updates, receiving tons of messages can be distracting and inefficient. For longer discussions, video or phone calls are the best solutions.
While one tool does not work for everything, using too many can lead to scattered communication and might disrupt the work of your colleagues. Choose what is best for your needs and stick with it.
-
Choose the Right Setup
Videocalls from home with colleagues, managers, or clients should be considered business meetings. This is why you should prepare in advance to ensure the success of the call while communicating professionalism, even from your living room.
Verify your video and audio system with a trusted colleague beforehand and position the webcam right in front of you. Dress professionally from head to toe (you might have to get up!), and focus on the communication without multitasking, as the other people connected can and will notice.
Posture is also a key element: sitting up straight and looking directly into the camera can increase our self-confidence and help our ability to connect with others, even if not in person.
-
Emails
While communicating only via email can be slow and inefficient and IMs are usually preferred, mails are the best solution to communicate with colleagues who are not available or working from a different time zone. Mailing lists are also one of the best solutions for managers to keep up to date the entire team with important data or tasks.
Since the number of e-mails will inevitably grow when working from home, having a well-organized and uncluttered inbox can be very useful.
Moreover, checking the emails as you receive them can be distracting and inefficient. The best way to deal with tons of inbound emails is by setting up a schedule where you check them at fixed times. Provided you don’t deal with emergencies.
-
Avoid Micromanagement
Remote work naturally implies a looser contact with other colleagues and manages, and while many platforms can help Head of Departments keep track of what employees are working on, good managers should avoid having complete control over the time-management of workers.
In fact, one of the main advantages of remote work is the higher productivity associated with higher flexibility in time management.
-
Focus on Deliverables
Focusing on deliverables, also called a Results-Only Working Environment, is the best way to motivate the staff and get the best results. Giving team members complete freedom and evaluating their output is useful for all types of jobs, but it can be particularly beneficial in remote working.
Remote Working at Langpros
Since 2011, Langpros operates with a decentralized team of translators and project managers scattered all over the globe, taking advantage of different time zones to be operative 24/7.
Our office workers in Dubai are now also taking advantage of remote working in compliance with the social distancing measures of the UAE Government.
Thanks to our years of experience, we are fully available in these difficult times to assist our clients with translation and remote interpreting solutions in over 100 languages.