Maintaining Productivity When Working From Home

The impact of the Coronavirus in the workplace has been felt globally. Many businesses have had to adapt to new working practices to ensure they survive, and now we are faced with a new challenge.

Going “back to normal” seems unlikely in the near future, and many employees are looking at flexible working requests, so if you are thinking about the long term practicalities of home-based working, this guide is for you.

Working from home can bring many advantages to both employer and employee, but home worker time management and maintaining the same level of productivity can be challenging. Employers need to ensure they have provided their staff with all of the support and tools they need to work productively.

Daily Check ins

“Out of sight, out of mind” as the old saying goes. Sometimes when employees are not in the office, there is the danger of this happening.

A daily check-in call (video or voice) will help with setting work priorities and give your employee a sense of involvement and normality with your business. This could also be a team meeting.

Equipment

The sudden lock down in the UK meant that many businesses were unprepared for the upheaval of home working. Stocks of laptops, desks and other necessary equipment became scarce.

Now is a good time to assess whether employees have everything they need in order to do their job from home.

Home worker time management software

Maintaining productivity is much easier if staff have access to the correct software to enable them to focus on their jobs. Perhaps you are now thinking about time sheets and home worker time management, or other cloud based processes to manage your employees remotely? Or maybe you are just not sure what is available that you could benefit from.

Point Progress have created a suite of products which could be just what you need.

• MyTime & TimeOff are our solutions for attendance and absence management. Electronic submission and processing of time sheets and absence management is a must have when your team are working remotely.
• MyExpenses is our mobile expense management solution. Wherever your employees are, there are bound to be expenses, and they need to be processed. If you have been used to using a paper based system, and now your employees are not office based, switching to a cloud solution would be the answer, and this is just one of the many benefits.
• IComply provides companies with the necessary data asset monitoring to remain compliant with the GDPR. Just because employees are out of the office, does not mean the GDPR should not be a consideration. In fact, it is even more important to make sure staff are aware of policies and data retention rules.

Provide Support and encourage self care

Working from home can often leave employees susceptible to feelings of isolation and loneliness. Employers need to do as much as they can to help prevent this, and provide support. Regular contact is part of this and encouraging well-being.

Do employees have a dedicated working area? Do they “switch off” outside of working hours? It is a good idea to implement some sort of EAP (Employee Assistance Program), which will provide staff with access to well-being support and counselling services if needed.

Team building

Team building is a key to making sure your employees are working together towards your business goals. If you have recruited employees remotely during the pandemic, setting aside some time to focus on team building is even more important. This could be done remotely, or in small groups (if able).

Be Flexible

Last but not least, flexibility will help to maintain productivity. All employees have their own situations to deal with. It could be that your employees may be more productive outside of the standard 9-5 day.

Assessing work set and completed in daily catch-up meetings will help to gauge how productive staff are.