The COVID-19 crisis has changed multiple facets of our lives with a long-term impact. It has ensured that the percentage of employees who work from home is at an all-time high. However, not all organizations and workforce are prepared to accept this seismic shift to working remotely.
Here are some tips to survive work from home during these difficult times:
- Choose a designated space for your work. It provides consistency, helps gain focus and avoid distractions. Ergonomic chairs and work desks are a great help to ensure you work on with comfort. Working from home can attract domestic chores and unlikely visitors. It becomes doubly important to have a specific workspace exclusively for your work. It is important to communicate your working hours to your family and emphasize not being disturbed unless in case of an emergency.
- Understand that working less is more beneficial than working past your office hours. It keeps you productive, maintains a healthy balance between work and home life, and allows you to set realistic deadlines. This helps prevent stress and facilitates spending quality time with family outside of your work.
- Dressing formally even when staying home is a good way to get into a professional state of mind before starting work. Taking snack breaks once too often when working from home is a major temptation – however, substitute nuts, fruits, vegetables, yogurt, etc for high carbohydrate snacks, and feel the difference.
- When working from home, be sure to stay off social media to maintain a high level of productivity. A little of your after-work hours can be spent on social media.
- The fact that you are working remotely does not mean the end of networking. Take a break from your virtual connections, gain some face-time with local businesses, look for potential clients, employers, and employees. Let your team understand the importance of interpersonal connections with a clear process definition, solid work ethics, and transparent collaboration.
- Manage client communications better, embrace the virtual options such as online portals to exchange documents, hosting solutions to access your work desktop, and practice management tools.
The world is unsure of how long the pandemic is going to rage on, how worse its effects are going to be, and how soon businesses will get back to normal functioning. Prepare yourself mentally for working from home for the foreseeable future, set up a solid workspace to function remotely, ensure your mental health, focus and productivity are well balanced. Working from home is a viable alternative to help your business stay organized, and add value to the client relationships painstakingly built.
