Tips for Remote Working: Keeping Productivity High During COVID-19

There is no doubt that the recent pandemic is putting a strain on our personal lives, and it is also putting a strain on our organizations. Amidst all the disruption, many businesses have mandated new remote working policies.

What can you do to keep your virtual team focused on productivity? Here are some tips to consider.

1. Make It Easy for Employees to Connect to Business Apps

The pandemic is forcing people to start working remotely. For many this is a shift from the norm, and employees may not understand how to perform their roles away from the office. The availability of cloud technology for numerous business-critical applications provides employees with the access they need to accomplish their daily work. Here are just a few examples.

• Using secure cloud-based solutions, finance can continue to manage cash flow, invoicing and AP for the business, and business leaders can continue to view daily reports to make quick strategic decisions.
• Department heads may need to access their budgets for re-forecasting. Making budgets accessible remotely enables them to run forecasting scenarios and course-correct as needed.
• Project managers can utilize virtual meeting and facilitation tools to continue delivering client projects remotely to ensure project execution does not get extended, costing both parties additional time and money.

2. Keep Communication Constant

As more locations follow shelter-in-place orders or proactively mandate remote work, keeping lines of communication open and consistent is key. Here are some tips for achieving this.

Make Your Meetings Virtual

Just because your team is remote, that does not mean important meetings should be canceled or put indefinitely on hold. Keep those meetings on track by facilitating working sessions such as vision or strategy setting, technology design and roadmapping, process mapping and prioritization, and requirements gathering.

If you don’t already, hold a kickoff meeting in the morning with your entire team to keep everyone on track and get them energized to conquer the day. You are in this together!

Share Measured Goals and Progress

The business data and metrics you analyze in the office should still be available when your staff is remote to keep everyone pointed in the same direction. Make sure your team sees the goals and knows the progress. As management expert Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”

Enable Team Collaboration

Ensure your team can instantly reach each other during prime business hours by using collaboration software, team portals, chats, etc. If you don’t have these tools yet, G2 Crowd can recommend the top ones on the market. Some are even free for smaller numbers of users.

Common tools to stay connected during this time include Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, GoToMeeting and Microsoft SharePoint. Some business applications like your ERP, CRM or financial planning applications also have collaboration tools built directly into them.

The goal is to make it as easy to connect with a coworker as if you were sitting right next to them in the office. Email works, but often there is a turnaround time that leaves employees waiting for a response before they can continue. By setting up a system to reach out to each other instantly, teams can keep productivity high.

Looking for more helpful tips and regulatory updates during this disruptive time? Visit our COVID-19 Resource Center for information on crisis management, remote workforce enablement, government aid and more.