But, these aren’t ordinary times and this isn’t ordinary remote work.
Traditional remote work comes with its pros and cons – forced remote work during a pandemic comes with others. But, there are enough articles highlighting the pros and cons of working remotely.
Today, we want to talk about how to get remote work accomplished successfully and easily. We believe that after COVID-19 many companies will continue with remote work, which means they need tips on how to get remote work done not only during a pandemic, but afterwards.
Here are our top tips for remote work success.
Adopt New Tools and Technologies (But Don’t Neglect the Classics)
Gone are the days of popping over to someone’s desk and asking them questions. Gone are the daily or weekly in-person meetings to set the pace or recap on the week. Gone are a lot of things that come with working in an office.
Which is why your organization needs to adopt new tools to keep the communication, collaboration, and culture flowing.
At this point, we’ve all heard of Zoom and Slack… but has your team actually adopted them? Are all team members using the same tools? Have you trained your team on how to take full advantage of them? Check out these Slack hacks to up your communication game.
Don’t forget about email! Email etiquette becomes even more critical when you can’t have those in-person follow ups.
And remember, sometimes picking up the phone is the easiest way to communicate. Hearing someone’s voice, their emotions, and being able to have a real-time conversation can turn hard problems into easy solutions.
Host Daily / Weekly Standup Meetings
Many teams already host daily or weekly meetings with their entire team. When working remotely, it becomes even more critical to get and keep the whole team on the same page.
Here at Celerative, we suggest having a Monday and Friday meeting. The Monday meeting is to set the priorities for the week – which there should only be a handful of to keep focus. Throughout the week, we have fifteen minute check-in meetings at the end of every day to make sure we’re making progress towards our overall goals.
Then, on Friday, we have an end-of-the-week recap meeting with all of the teams gathered together. We get to break down silos and get all teams up-to-date on the latest and greatest across the entire organization.
If your organization is new to working remotely, now might be a good time to experiment. Take a month to host a different kind of meeting every week and see what the team likes the most!
Keep the Culture Going
Nothing kills a company faster than a bad culture. While many companies are being forced to lay off or furlough employees, it’s the companies’ job to make current employees feel safe and celebrated.
Some suggestions for keeping culture alive during these trying times is to host digital game nights, happy hours, book clubs, or all going to the same webinar or digital event together and discussing afterwards.
If you are hiring during these times, it’s going to be a weird experience for employees. Make it fun and show off your amazing culture by sending them a gift box full of swag or a gift card they can use later. Onboarding becomes even more critical when working remotely to ensure every employee hits the ground running.
The stronger the culture, the more you can rely on your employees to be successful without unnecessary, burdensome oversight.
Remote Work is the Future
We never could have predicted that remote work would be a force powered by a pandemic. But, we hope that companies realize the superpowers of remote work and continue adopting it even after these challenging times.
We’re in unprecedented times. While many companies were making the move to remote work, many more have been forced to launch and scale remote work across their entire organization due to COVID-19.
