Long-term work from home is something that suddenly got us and many other companies. Unusual situations require creativity, and for us, working at a distance is nothing new. Do you want to know our ways to make work go smoothly? Enjoy a small review.
Before we talk about the importance of regular email contact and developing cooperation procedures, let’s think about something else. Isolation is a new situation for many of us, which is why it is worth keeping a bond within the company. How? Communication! Chat conversations or on the phone not only on work topics, e-coffee or sharing photos from the home office – we implement everything and give us a sense of community.
Isolation and the home office for the whole company is a good situation to think about what we need to maintain business continuity. The most common answers are:
All this should be easy to use, intuitive and above all easily accessible – after all, we try to recreate the situation in which we sit desk at a desk, at any time we can ask a colleague or colleague about something or tell about our problems or successes at a company meeting.
If our company has not been preparing for the epidemic for a long time and we did not install this type of program in advance, it is worth looking for something that will be functional and easy to use for both users and IT administrators implementing it in the company’s system.
How many companies, so many messengers. Skype, Spark, Slack – they certainly worked in a situation where it was necessary to quickly communicate between teams or write that Mr. Sandwich came to the office. In a situation where team members work from different places, a tool is needed that can be described as holistic. According to us (and most Polish universities and institutions), Teams – a messenger from Microsoft – has the most functions with the easiest way to use it.
What Microsoft Teams gives us:
We know how to communicate in a team, how to organize conferences, how to share a screen … And where to get the materials needed for work? Preferably from the place where the most current versions of documents and other necessary files are placed, ordered according to clear criteria. In a word – from the intranet!
An intranet is a long story. How to adjust it to the needs of the company, what functions it should have, and how to personalize it – such questions are of course important, but in the current situation, however, the most important is a solid repository of company knowledge.
We have always been using SharePoint and we can say – that’s it. Working from home hinders contact with colleagues, which is why company resources on the intranet should be organized as best as possible so that everyone who has access to the company intranet can easily identify them and find what they need.
It is only the need to organize work from home that shows how difficult it is to sometimes record work time. This is a task for managers and team leaders, but in such a situation they need special help. And since we’re all working remotely, let’s try remote solutions.
vWork is our proprietary solution and works well with us. This is an add-on to SharePoint that makes it easy to report hours worked. For employees – because you can see how much time he worked in individual projects, and for leaders – because you can see progress at work and it is much easier to make settlements.
That’s all about the tools. We have already mentioned the good attitude … I think we have everything to make it effective, but also quite pleasant from home. So what, maybe daily? Even with the meowing cat in the background 😊