The pandemic known as Covid-19 has left the world in shambles. Social distancing is now a must, and working on-site has become highly improbable. Due to this, many offices have adopted a work-from-home setup wherein their employees can work remotely.
However, some people tend to dip in productivity when working from home. To prevent that from happening, listed below are some of CEO Larby Amirouche’s tips in order to maximize your team’s efficiency.
1. Check-in without being overbearing:
Seeing your team less often can result in anxiety regarding their output. Due to this, you become restless and get tempted to ask them for updates every once in a while. What this causes on their part is extra stress, and in the long run, burnout.
When your team succumbs to burnouts, their productivity will falter, regardless of whether they’re working on-site or remotely. To prevent this, go for scheduled meetings and daily check-ins instead of stuffing them with questions every now and then.
2. Define boundaries between work and their actual lives:
It’s easy for some people to get lost in work without noticing the time. This happens more often than not in a remote environment because there’s no concept of going home. Do this often enough, and you’ll have yourself a dried up employee.
To prevent this from happening, have your team set daily schedules for themselves. Make it a requirement for them to have a schedule mapping their lunch break and maybe a few intervals for personal breaks. Make them set alarms for the end of the workday, and remind them at times that their work is finished for the day.
Sometimes, there’s nothing better than someone telling you that work for the day is finally over. It won’t hurt to celebrate a bit of a break sometimes.
3. Relax working hours:
Some of your employees might be early risers, and others might be night owls. In order to maximize their productivity, and as long as your business is structured for it, allow them to choose their schedules. You won’t know how much of a boost it will be for them knowing that they have the freedom to choose when they work.
While this might sound a little scary for those who like to micromanage, if you have competent and trustworthy team leaders to guide their members, everything will be alright.
4. Recognize hard work:
Earlier, it was discussed that finished work is harder to see due to everyone working remotely. This is also true with recognition. For employees, having their hard work unnoticed will feel like somewhat of a stab to their efforts.
What this causes is a shift in their mindset and thought that their effort is meaningless. One way to prevent this is to affirm their achievements and congratulate them on jobs done well. Positive reinforcement goes a long way especially in times like this.
5. Help them practice Self-Care:
Mental health is a huge part of our lives. Day-by-day as the crisis worsens, the mental welfare of people are attacked. To combat this, it would be in your best interest to help your employees do activities that promote self-care. Some tips would be:
-
Encourage daily routines
A huge part of our day-to-day lives before the pandemic is our daily routines. Tell your team to maintain doing these daily routines despite the lack of the commute in order for their body clocks to adjust with ease.
-
Go outside and get some exercise
Being stuck at home seems to eat away at our activeness. We begin to treat the sun as our enemy, and sweat as our kryptonite. However, encouraging physical activity will help the blood in your veins to move, and ultimately help you become healthier.
If going outside is a safe option, please do so. Wear a mask though, and observe proper social distancing. The infection rate of this pandemic is no joke. A whiff of fresh air and the sight of green trees and a vivid world will help shine a bright light to a dulling world filled with bad news.
It won’t hurt to arrange exercise zoom meetings during weekends as well. It will help build team relations as well as get your blood moving, effectively killing two birds with one stone.
-
Leave some time for meditation
6. Create work policies that apply to everyone:
It’s hard-working knowing that X employee gets to work less than Y does. And no matter how hard we try to deny it, we will always be comparing our situation with others. In order to help alleviate this frustration, make sure to apply the work policies you create to everyone.
It’s important to be fair in these times because simple frustrations build up and snowball into bigger ones. Help manage this by minimizing the reasons for them to rise and apply policies equally.
Conclusion
Having your whole office shift to a remote setting so suddenly can be daunting, but if you follow these tips, you’ll make it a whole lot easier for you and your team to adjust. Striking a perfect balance between life and work was hard to do pre-pandemic, and it’s even harder to do now, but given the cooperative effort by you and your team, you’ll be sure to achieve it.
