Working from home has now been rendered a necessity by employers across the globe,
due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Other than practicing social distancing to stop the spread
of the virus employees can save a lot of time, while not having to get ready and commute
to work. However, it comes with certain draw-backs like the home environment is more
relaxing than an office and employees can be distracted by the same. Given the right
attitude along with the use of correct technology working from home can be effective for
both employers and the employees.
Here is how you can make the best use of technology to be productive while working from home.
Communication is Key:
If, there are multiple teams working on a project remotely seamless communication needs to be a necessity. Microsoft Team is a unified communication and collaboration platform that includes integrated work place chats, video meetings, and file storage among other services aimed at providing better communication among teams. WhatsApp groups are also an effective way to enable communication among employees.
Brainstorming Sessions:
Before going ahead with assigning task on a project, brainstorming sessions, or sharing of ideas between teams or within team will facilitate who is good at doing what. Therefore, team members don’t feel stuck with a task. Slack is a good tool with promotes sharing of ideas, float questions on task, and compare notes.
Get Organized
Tools like Trello can help you organize work flow whether it is for yourself or for your team. You can use it to track the development schedule of a project, prioritize tasks, and help organize new projects. This is a great way to keep track of all the process taking place in a project.
Seamless Sharing and Managing:
Use of cloud platforms like Google Docs, Drop Box, and One Drive are a few file sharing platforms. These will enable you to collaboratively work as a team. Sharing of large files also become easier and faster. All your team members can have access to the documents being shared at the same time.
Meet Virtually:
Face to face interactions are necessary at given intervals so that everyone in the team is on the same page. Moreover, video conferencing is a good way to engage people in conversations within a team. Tools like Skype and Zoom are quite useful to organize video meetings when people located at different locations need to speak to each other face to face.
Track Time For Accountability:
Accountability for the amount of time that is spent on a work is important to ensure every task gets done on time. This can be done through time tracking applications like Toggl and Harvest among others. In order to be more productive time tracking apps also lets you know how much time is being spent on what task and accordingly you can adjust your pace.
Working from home or remote working is here to stay even after the situation with the virus settles simply because it's more time and cost effective. Additionally, technology will help facilitate productivity.
