With the start of the pandemic, the way startups in Europe did business had been turned upside down. Many governments and companies advised employees that working from home is the best possible approach to limit the spread of the coronavirus — and offices became virtual overnight.
For most of us, we were quick to set up work on dining tables, sofas and beds as our temporary (and perhaps too cosy) work stations.
Why is the office desk out of the window?
For a long time, in the pre-pandemic world, the European Commission believed that hybrid working was ideal, because it was a flexible work arrangement and even those who telecommute tend to stay engaged and productive. But to really get the full benefits of working from home (without causing disruption to the office itself), we'd recommend doing at least five key things.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Be responsive to your team
Since remote work doesn’t create distractions or interruptions, we’re able to respond to feedback or issues instantly — and offer solutions. As more people work from home even in the recover-from-a-global-pandemic world, the need to be responsive, stay engaged and just generally be there has become even more important.
2. Build positive habits when working from home
Of course, home is not home anymore: it’s where we have to be the most productive, or get a clear head space to take on the new week. However, there’s still a huge challenge for most people, even when working remotely: How can we lead a productive work life when our schedules fluctuate between home and office so often? And how do we juggle our work and life responsibilities when we’re home all day?
3. Get organised: Plan ahead
“Plan, plan, plan,” says Laura Gibson, founder of the Vancouver-based company Inkling “Not doing any planning can be disastrous.”
One of the most important things to remember when working from home is to keep your routines, though we’re aware of how counter-intuitive this might sound.
4. Keep your routine intact
When trying to ease into a working from home setup, it helps to start off as you normally would: at work.
Re-establish the routine you’re used to: Mail comes in every morning, and you have to go through it — and the important ones — and put in the appropriate items in your inbox.
After you’re done, you’ve got to be in front of the computer by 8am to meet with your colleagues, do a catch-up call with one of the partners and the heads of the teams.
After the working day has ended, you may choose to continue working until midnight or later if you’re particularly passionate. What’s more, you can take it a step further with non-work related things like Netflix, reddit and ping-ponging with friends — but they do have to be time sensitive.
5. Do not take your work with you
As tempting as it may be checking your inbox during lunch, or combining laundry with a camera-off zoom meeting **been there, done that; stop yourself from getting into this nasty habit of not drawing any lines between work and personal life: it's a dangerous slippery slope.
When and if work starts overflowing into your time-slots for personal chores, family time, self-care, etc- give yourself the much-needed reminder that we can't multitask, even if we believe we can. It's true. Our work is portable. Most of us deal with different timezones and brief deadlines. This doesn't mean, however, that we need to burn ourselves out to prove we're pulling the weight.
Follow the tips above, and you will manage to build healthy habits of WFH.
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