Four tips for helping employees shift to remote work

Making remote work a smooth transition for your team

Recent COVID-19 outbreaks have made employers lean into remote work to help their employees stay happy and healthy. While many employees are used to working from home, it can be a challenging transition for employees who’ve never done it before. Today, we wanted to shed some light on how to make the shift to remote work better for everyone.

1. Stress the importance of building a routine at home

Routine makes all the difference when it comes to remote work. It’s easy to believe you can roll out of bed and onto your laptop, but that doesn’t create a productive work environment. As you make the transition to remote work, you probably want to follow a similar routine to what you did when you worked in an office, at least for a little bit.

There is so much to think about when making the transition to remote work like security, productivity, and project management. Instead of switching up routines immediately, employees are better off creating a routine that they can slowly ease into as they create a remote work environment at home. As an employer, you need to stress routine to your employees and help them set up a routine that works for them.

2. Work on strengthening written communication skills

We’ve talked about the importance of communicating with your remote workers before. As more of you’re employees become remote, this is still important. Written communication is challenging because you can’t read tone well, and there is no body language.

There are a few things you might want to consider when it comes to written communication. How will your employees react to the use of:

• Emojis in written communication
• Bolded or italicized text.
• Color in the text (for example, using red to highlight an important message.)

These things can change the meaning of an email or Slack message. Where does your company stand on using these in written communication? Where might the use of these be inappropriate?

Overcommunicate about work problems and updates

Since you might need to rely a bit heavier on written communication, you need to take communication to the next level. Everyone should overcommunicate concerns and make sure that everyone is up to date with work issues. You can use a shared task list, so everyone can see where the team is progressing or stalling.

Add video or audio whenever you can

Next, you want to add in video or audience whenever you can. Video and audio are the next best thing to being in a room face-to-face. You don’t want to overdo video or audio meetings, because they can cut into the time your employees have to do their job. You should add video and audio calls to the rotation when appropriate.

3. Set up remote employees with the tools they need to succeed

Being in an office gives your employees a ton of perks and benefits. Offices usually have work computers, snacks to eat during lunch, and space for meetings. You don’t get any of that when you work from home. You want to make sure that your employees have access to work laptops and any files they’d be able to access at work when they are home.

Another thing remote employees need to consider is space. How can you help them by giving them space to work on their job as we shift to remote work? You may want to provide a desk if they don’t already have one. Otherwise, your employees might resort to working from bed or their couch, which doesn’t help them sleep or turn off their work brains after they’ve put their hours in.

4. Keep tabs on how everyone feels during the remote work experience

As your employees get to know remote work, it’s essential to keep tabs on how everyone feels during this remote work experience. You might be shockingly surprised how much work your employees get done when working from home.

As an employer, you might not be completely sold on remote work yet. While dealing with diseases like COVID-19 aren’t opportune times to test out new work arrangements, you might find that you and your employees enjoy remote work. There are things we must consider when making the transition to remote work, but right now, this is what makes many employees feel happier and potentially healthier, depending on where you live.

Make the shift to remote work

COVID-19 has created a new situation for employers. Many employers might not even have a clear remote work policy, but they need to take the health of their employees seriously. Our best tip is to keep on top of what’s happening in your city. Watch local reports for updates about your city and what other businesses are deciding to do. From there, create a remote work policy if you don’t have one and consult with your employees about their comfort level working at home vs. coming into work. Put the health of your employees over your fears of remote work.

Are you making the transition to remote work due to personal reasons or COVID-19? Dealing with the transition to remote work isn’t as challenging as it seems if you openly communicate with employers and co-workers throughout your experience.