While it has been a while since COVID-19 has hit the United States, many still find themselves working from home. Despite that many have been working from home for almost a year, it has been a huge adjustment. You have to make sure that you are helping keep your employees safe and engaged, while continuing to innovate and learn new ways to embrace digital ways of working. Below, we will dive into how you can help your employees navigate working from home.
Have an Open Communication Channel
It’s important for your company to have an internal communication tool. This will help you be able to communicate and share information more efficiently than only communicating through email. For us, we use Slack to communicate. You are able to quickly message your coworkers, and they are able to respond faster to you. You do not have to worry about the formalities of emails, which is what makes this communication so simple.
Use Tools for Easy Collaboration
Working remotely has made collaboration very hard. It shows us how we have taken easy communication in-office for granted. Aside from encouraging formal and informal video hangouts, it’s helpful to have collaborative social tools to work on documents.
There are many different tools you can use to help make collaboration between your team easier. Google Docs is one of the easiest to set up, especially if you are already using Google for your emails. With Google Docs, you and your team can edit files at the same time while having all of your changes saved automatically. You’re also able to leave comments on documents or spreadsheets, so whoever is working on it can see what changes need to be made.
Taking Care of Employees Whose Jobs Aren’t Remote
Like many businesses, not every employee has a job that can function remotely. While it’s easier now to be able to send in some of your staff back into the office, some employees still might need extra assistance.
One of the biggest issues is that with many schools operating virtually, even those employees who can work from home need assistance. You should encourage everyone to have more flexibility to ease the challenges caused by childcare needs for those affected. Along with this, you should encourage those who are back in office to follow the CDC guidelines to help stop the spread of COVID-19. You need to make sure to check in with your employees to help make sure that everyone is doing okay. Also, you need to make sure that your employees are comfortable coming forward if they need extra help. Whether it’s financials or mental health, this pandemic has taken a toll on everyone.
It’s always been important for you to offer tools and resources to keep employees productive and engaged at work. However, now more than ever it’s important for leaders to take the friction out of work so that employees can focus on what really matters. While this isn’t an easy fix for every company, if you’re in a position to help your employees you need to.