Small and medium-sized Brazilian companies are undergoing tense moments with the second wave of COVID-19. What seemed a return to the “normal” state of work, took most of the managers and entrepreneurs.
Many are concerned about financial difficulties due to interruptions, others live for fear of having to close permanently. In parallel to all this, offices that do not need their open doors to stay working, are adopting the much acclaimed home office again, seen as the " new normal ."
Collectively remote work is still a challenge, after all, managing at a distance and maintaining the same productivity is not simple but necessary. This is why you adopt priorities and put some strategies into practice can make a difference and perhaps rid the company from many difficulties.
Below we will see 5 home office safety and productivity hacks for small and medium businesses adapt better to the hostile environment in which they find themselves.
1. Create an ergonomic working space
Organizing the work environment correctly is as important as having the right tools. When space is a problem and the employee cannot perform their work fluidly, it ends up reducing their productivity and over time it becomes a nuisance.
Correctly position your arms, feet and even the height of the computer monitor at eye level can greatly help in muscle tension and pain at the end of the day. The chair also greatly influences the comfort needed for work.
See in the Sesi portal, 10 work ergonomics tips , and try to apply them as many employees as possible in home office, simply optimizing productivity during office hours.
2. KPIs to monitor
Some performance indicators (KPIs) when monitored analytically can greatly help with remote team productivity:
- Self -discipline: the ability of an employee to work independently and with less supervision;
- Effective communication: an employee's ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with teams and customers;
- Learning and Adaptation Skills: A employee's ability to learn new things efficiently and also to adapt to the new environment and new forms of work;
- Responsibility: Employees must learn to be responsible for their activities, after all, home office supervision is lower;
- Collaboration: Everyone should be able to work with other teammate, even distant from each other, adapting forms of communication and processes;
- Availability: Even with flexible working hours, everyone must be available for meetings when necessary
See which employees have the adjectives and characteristics mentioned above, and identify which ones need the most attention. Improvements in this sense positively interfere with the productivity of the team as a whole.
3. Make a flexible programming
This is a challenge for most companies because they believe business hours are universal.
However, for home office teams, the idea of work schedule needs to be thrown away. You must remember that people are working at home, and different from the office the home environment can have several obstacles to work in conventional time:
- Children who are not at school
- Family responsibilities
- Lower performance networks and devices
- Internet and equipment failures
- External factors such as works close to the residence
It is important to consider that perhaps your employees prefer to work at home and yet be more productive in that environment that seems to be comfortable. But this improved productivity can come at a price for the company: flexible times.
Remember that if work is being done in a timely manner, you should not matter when it is being done.
4. Manage the burnout
Burnout is a problem related to the lack of adaptation of the employee to work at home. The reason is the inability to separate home work. When this happens, employees can start to feel like they are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Moreover, there is usually no pause (necessary) for family life.
The key to solving burnout problems is open communication with one or more people, seeking to help them during this period.
Some tips to educate your team are:
- Create a routine with well -defined working hours between working hours and home hours
- Establish a work room, so in this place only work, outside it, is your home
- Make sure your employees are communicating with their loved ones outside working hours
- Measure the stress levels of each employee. High levels may indicate the beginning of a burnout crisis.
- Understand priorities. Find out which work is a priority and which can be postponed, so as not to overload the team.
If team members do not work intelligently, they will suffer fast exhaustion. Feeling "in the office" every day is exhaustive. For this you will need to allow the team to work at a flexible time.
5. Use the same office software without installing anything
With the economic crisis, time has become synonymous with revenue. Therefore, to waste time on unnecessary activities is to lose money. Adapting systems, files and software to remote workers is a long task and in some cases, complex. But to have the same office software, the same files and use the same systems, there is a solution: using business VPN.
With Lumiun Business VPN , for example, it is possible to make remote access to the company's internal files and systems in a safe way, without endangering the data trafficked during access and also increasing home office productivity.
In addition, Windows has a tool called Remote Working Area, which allows a distance employee to access the system from another computer quickly. This tool is being an ally for companies that are looking for remote access to employees in home office. You can learn more about functionality, in the article how to access remote work area safely on our blog.
6. Automatize everything you can
Automation can be used so that remote employees become more productive, worrying less about details, leaving small tasks in the technology.
One of the largest productivity thieves in the business environment is repetitive and low priority tasks that do not require a human touch to be performed correctly. Things like filter emails, update database, approve time off or schedule can be automated to save time.
Some sectors can automate tasks up to a certain point, and when total automation is not possible, creating a process to streamline routine tasks can dramatically increase productivity.
7. Focus on tasks controlling access to the internet remotely
Since the remote work was adopted, managers have been concerned about employee productivity. Directly, companies want to know if their employees are working even when they are outside the office.
Therefore, the search for internet access management and monitoring systems have been increasing as small and medium -sized companies try to implement supervision and responsibility in a remote work environment.
On the other side of the coin, there is the flexibility and engagement factor, where certain "releases" can improve the employee's performance in home office.
However, leaving everything released does not guarantee productivity improvements, on the contrary, it can disrupt the employee, taking time and attention with websites and content outside the scope of work.
Implementing an Internet access control system for home office employees is a relevant action, and should be seen as a strategy valid for managers and IT professionals responsible for creating solutions to improve the productivity of remote workers.
Lumiun's business VPN can be an ally in this strategy. In addition to enabling employees to remotely connect to the company's local network, it is also possible to block and release websites, applications and categories.
See more about how to monitor internet access to remote work .
The next step
This year will bring many challenges to small and medium businesses, where the strongest and most prepared will find the best ways to overcome these difficulties.
As we have seen earlier, home office safety and productivity can make this process much easier, so the next step is to identify bottlenecks in your business, and try to apply as many hack as possible.
If you want to see more tips and useful tools for home office work, visit the Home Office Guide for Small and Medium Enterprises .
Until later!
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