THE CHALLENGES OF ADAPTING TO REMOTE WORK
20% of remote workers say their biggest challenge is collaboration and communication, and 20% say it is loneliness. By encouraging employees to follow these established best practices for remote work, you can foster a sense of teamwork and connection, while maintaining efficiency.
DEFINE YOUR HOME WORKSPACE
Establish a dedicated, quiet area of your home as your workspace. Doing so can help you define boundaries for when you’re working and when you’re off-duty
at home, and it can help you get into the rhythm of work each day by stepping into your “office.”
ESTABLISH ONLINE
MEETING ETIQUETTE
For conference calls, encourage the use of muting when not speaking and be sure to announce yourself and speak clearly. Video meetings are the best way to connect and collaborate remotely but can offer distractions — try to keep your
room well-lit and look at the camera while speaking. It can be tempting to multi-task during online meetings, but other participants can tell if you aren’t
focused — stay engaged and present!
LEARN TO USE IDENTITY & STATUS
To avoid distracting a busy colleague or wasting time by trying to reach someone who is unavailable, learn to check their
presence status. Teams and 3CX integrates with your calendar to automatically update your presence when “In a meeting”, but you should make it a habit to change your status to “Be right back” or “Do not disturb” so your colleagues know you when you can’t be reached. Setting status messages can provide even further context to your team.
COMMUNICATE!
Clearly communicate your availability schedule to your colleagues and use group chats to keep relevant team members up to date on project progress.
STANDARDIZE CLOUD
FILE STORAGE
To keep remote collaboration efficient, establish guidelines for cloud file storage, including file structures and document naming conventions, so that colleagues can easily find and collaborate on documents.
DON’T LOSE THE SOCIAL ASPECT!
Without in-office meetings, drive-by desk conversations, and chats by the coffeemaker, you can quickly feel disconnected from your colleagues. Set aside time for video meetings just to chat and catch up as a team face-to-face. And keep things fun by using emojis and gifs in your chats and emails!
I strongly suggest remote workers utilize multi-factor authentication on all of the services they are using remotely. It takes just minutes to setup and offers a high degree of trust that the user accessing your company data, communications, and marketing plans; is actually your user.
Microsoft reports that 99% of account hacks are blocked using multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Strat[IS] ready!
As we work through these strange times, know that Strat[IS] stands ready to assist with your remote work initiatives in any way we can.
If you’d like to have a call to discuss tools to improve your remote security or discuss how we can tune Zoom Meetings, your current phone system, or Microsoft 365 to create a better remote collaboration experience for your employees, you can use the super handy (and totally hygienic) form right here:
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