Our Top 10 Tips For Working from Home
With many of us now working from home for the foreseeable future, it’s good to find ways to stay productive and positive in your new workspace. Although we all have different circumstances, many of the challenges are the same. At eCom, some of our team regularly work from home anyway, and below are some tips they’ve shared on how to get the most out doing so.
Posted 19 March 2020
1) Maintain Regular Hours
Having clear guidelines for when to work and when to call it a day helps many remote workers maintain work-life balance. Let the other people in your home know when you’ll be working and ask them to keep interruptions to a minimum.
2) Take your breaks
A short break in the morning and afternoon, even if it’s just to grab a cup of coffee is good to help you refocus. Also, be sure to take your lunchbreak too.
3) Take some exercise
Taking some form of exercise in the day while you’re working from home will really help boost your physical and mental health, even if that just means a walk round the block at lunchtime.
4) Maintain regular contact with your team
Keeping in touch by email or using some of the collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack, etc., helps everyone to get the most out of working from home together. If you’re on a virtual call, make sure people know you are there. Turning on your mic and webcam also really helps you connect with the others on the call.
5) Have a dedicated office space
Even if you need to work from a corner of your living room or a bedroom, placing your laptop on a table and having a chair that you only use when working, will really help you focus. It will also help you at the end of the day too, because physically moving away from that space will help you switch off mentally. Also, since you’ll be spending a good chunk of your day in your office chair, making sure you are comfortable will really help.
6) Ask colleagues for help
If you need help with something, be sure to get in touch with your colleagues, just the same as you would if you were in the office environment. They will be pleased you reached out and the interaction will help your colleagues too.
7) Use a VPN
A virtual private network will give you secure access to all of the files you need from the office, wherever you are. This is a really useful way of making sure your entire team can successfully work from home.
8) Look for training opportunities
Just because you’re not in the office doesn’t mean you need to miss out on training opportunities. Online learning is a great way to learn important new skills. This will keep you up to date, which will help your organisation stay ahead of the competition and will also help you with career development, all at the same time.
9) Be positive
When you work remotely full-time, remember to be positive – e.g., embrace the exclamation point! Find emoji’s you like and use them :-) – these seemingly little things really help.
10) Make it personal
Our final top tip for working from home is find your rhythm and what works for you. If you need a little help, why not ask your colleagues and see what they do. Or check out some of the other great blogs and learn how to make working from home work for you.
