Posted on: March 23, 2021
4 Simple Yet Effective Ways To Upgrade Your Work From Home Setup
Get startedWorking from home is not a new concept that businesses are following. Instead, it has always been on the list of companies needing productive outputs regardless of where their teams work. Companies have started realizing that it is not necessary to have big office spaces to make an impact on the work culture.
A work-from-home setup can manage productivity during remote work for businesses. So, what is the solution that organizations need to make a difference in today’s hybrid work environment?
Table of contents
Figure Out Your Work-From-Home Setup Requirements
How you establish a work-from-home setup is a major factor influencing your decisions and strategies. Companies can reduce their rent, electricity, and transportation expenses by providing ergonomic spaces to employees with a better work-life balance.
However, some companies have adopted the hybrid system to engage their workforce post-lockdown. While working in a hybrid model, working styles on-site and remotely may differ. Such irregularities can create challenges for businesses to manage remote employees with elevated productivity.
4 Challenges That Companies Providing Work-From-Home Setup Encounter
Some challenges are associated with working from home, such as low productivity, balancing between work and personal life, and many other critical aspects.
1. Time Management
It is becoming difficult for employees to manage their time because earlier, they had to commute to their office daily and stick to set working hours. However, now that they have plenty of time, they find it difficult to keep up with expanding flexibility.
Pro tip: Time management becomes easier with the right tools and plans. If employers have scheduled hours set and use an employee monitoring system for tracking login hours; it would give employees better clarity to manage their time well!
2. Distraction
Working from home is not synonymous with distractions; constant disturbing elements can lead to unproductive employees. The result is evident, and employers cannot afford to get themselves land on any issues caused by under-productive employees.
Pro tip: To overcome this, employees can have a dedicated space for showing up productively. Managers also need to ensure that employees are adhering to their shifts. To make things more streamlined, remote employee monitoring software would help provide alerts about workers exceeding break hours.
3. Supervision
Remote employees have the liberty to work without any supervision and guidance. However, not all employees are supposed to work the same way. They need constant supervision or even time-to-time guidance to provide productive output.
Pro tip: This challenge can be resolved with employee activity monitoring, where periodic screenshots are taken by the software supervisors and managers can access. Managers can use those screenshots and productivity stats in employee feedback and improvement.
4. Communication
Lack of communication has been responsible for many business problems for the companies when coming to work from home setup. It leads to a lack of swiftness in decision making which puts a stopper to the management to initiate timely actions.
Pro tip: To address this issue, remote team collaboration software should be used so employees can easily communicate through audio and video meetings with their fellow beings and seniors and make strategic decisions.
4 Ways to Upgrade Your Work From Home Setup
Now that working from home is widely accepted by employers and employees, it is necessary to have the right infrastructure at home that enables employees to improve work productively and motivates them not to slack off from work.
Some of the ways through which employers can upgrade their work-from-home setup and strategies are mentioned below.
1. Ensure Productivity Management
Your employees want you to know that they are working. Especially when teams are remote, they have to ensure their supervisors do not question their productivity. However, certain employees might take advantage of this work flexibility.
Managers should enable remote workforce management tools to stop such indisciplined behavior and help employees realize their accountability towards work. It helps to track the total work hours of employees while bifurcating their active and inactive time status into productive and non-productive performance behavior.
2. Track Data and Network Security
VPN (Virtual Private Network) helps establish a protected network connection when using a public network. Remote workers need to be extra cautious during any data transfer.
Moreover, network health status needs to be regularly checked. A network health monitoring tool can assist in tracking VPN health status, bandwidth utilization, and network patterns. This way, managers can save critical data while keeping employees in secure connectivity.
3. Foster Real-Time Collaboration
Various internal communication channels must be available to the employees to facilitate seamless communication within the hybrid work environment. A medium where supervisors and employees can interact seamlessly within a restricted but secure environment is important.
Therefore, remote collaboration tools can help bring all the workers on the same page and provide them with an in-office environment.
4. Performance Behavioral Analysis
The goal for organizations should be to keep track of employee performance behavior instead of micromanaging them. There are instances when the agent is negotiating with a customer or has been unable to cope with work-life balance, which may lead to burnout.
Businesses can avoid such circumstances by analyzing employees’ performance, taking breaks, or being inactive. These methods will help your business know your employees better and improve productivity.
Takeaway
Working from home is a dominating concept that will stay long, and businesses must keep tackling challenges. With technological advancement, organizations opt for remote employee monitoring software to sync with how employees work.
Embracing operational upgrades tailored for remote work setups promises enduring benefits, ensuring adaptability and resilience in the face of evolving work dynamics over time.