Supporting staff who are new to working at home

 

 

Working from home is not the same as being in an office. Some of your staff may have children at home who need supervision and help with schooling. Others may want to help vulnerable people in their area or have volunteered to assist in frontline operations. More than anything, those staff who have never worked at home before, need time to adjust. Give them some slack. Your objective is to keep your team productive whilst staying mentally and physically healthy. 

 

Assess your team on what they do within agreed timescales, rather than whether they are online continually through normal office hours. Frankly, if someone works brilliantly at 8 o’clock in the evening and completes everything expected of them, everybody wins. 

If you schedule meetings online, do it at a time that suits everyone as much as possible. You don’t have to do a team call at 9am just because that’s how it’s always been. 

 

Encourage people to take time out to do exercise, to eat healthily and speak to family and friends. Treat them well at this stage and you will have loyal staff for a long time after the coronavirus has left us. 

Importantly, if people are not set up to work from home, give them as much as information as you can to help them create a workspace, get into a work mindset at home and build some kind of daily routine. And as we said above, make sure they have the work tools they need. 

 

Your team may not be together, but you can guarantee that they still value each other and want to spend time as a team. Look for opportunities to get people together online away from just work meetings. 

 

Why not treat the team to lunch through Just Eat or Uber Eats and have a lunchtime catch-up with the everyone? Bring the canteen to the people! 

If one of your colleagues is having a birthday, celebrate! Send them an ecard –check out Hallmark, Openme and GroupGreeting provide online cards that can be signed by the whole team. Think about something you can do on the day to get the team to celebrate online with them. 

 

If someone achieves a great success or objective, make a big noise about it during a team meeting, use an app like Wooboard that allows you to drive recognition amongst colleagues, integrate with social media and build proper collaboration between your teams. 

 

Why not organise a quiz night or karaoke online. Get the team to come up with ideas for social interaction both during the day and after hours. Keeping people connected and not just thinking about their work commitments is a great way to keep morale high and engagement deep during this difficult period. 

 

In amongst a lot of concern for the wellbeing of your team, it is vital you look after yourself and any other senior leaders in your business. Make sure you get enough sleep, eat healthily, take exercise, practice mindfulness, dress in a way that makes you feel empowered and effective whilst being comfortable, make sure you have your workspace optimised so you can focus on your team. 

 

This is a tough time for business owners. The pressure on cashflow, let alone managing people and customers, means there are so many balls to juggle. If you have managers supporting your teams make sure they are looking after themselves well. And if you are responsible for your staff, it’s more important than ever that you also focus on yourself so that you can give your very best to your people. 

 

We wish you all the very best during this time and implore you all to stay safe. 

Information That May Help 

ACAS Working From Home Advice – advice for employers and employees to ensure that health and safety, management and communication are maintained properly during the crisis 

BBC – 5 Ways to Work Well From Home – a well thought out approach to working from home 

CIPD _ Questionnaire How to Prepare For Homeworking – this questionnaire has everything you need to ensure your staff are set up to work from home 

Mental Health Foundation – Looking After Your Mental Health During the Coronavirus Outbreak – an excellent guide to keeping mentally healthy whilst working at home 

Tony Robbins – 3 Steps to a Breakthrough – this podcast will help you and your people find strategies to overcome the fear of coronavirus and the dramatic changes that have resulted