Start working from home: A suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion

In­tro­duc­ing a work from home policy is a real challenge for both employees and employers. However, there are also many benefits to working from home for both employees and employers, and it has never been easier to let your employees start working from home than it is now. If you want to launch a remote working policy today, you can do so quickly and easily, in an organized way. It is important to be well prepared and have extensive knowledge on all reg­u­la­tions and laws that must be observed.

Working from home is a very popular perk for employees. They save time on their commute, can cook fresh food during their lunch breaks and can organize their work and personal time much more easily. Many in­di­vid­u­als also find it easier to be more pro­duc­tive when they can work from the calm en­vi­ron­ment of their homes. Indeed, many people value the ability to work from home more than a high salary or other job benefits.

In principle, it is also ben­e­fi­cial for the employer to start a working from home policy. Many employees are more pro­duc­tive because they are less dis­tract­ed, are able to focus, and are less likely to call in sick. Work from home policies can have a strong impact on a company. Employees are generally happier and more loyal when they are offered the option of working from home.

If you want to introduce remote working, you have to take into account the technical and personal aspects as­so­ci­at­ed with this change of workplace. Technical re­quire­ments can be met in a very short time, and can also be main­tained with minimal effort. The personal component, on the other hand, requires constant attention.

Managers and employers should be careful not to succumb to the delusion of control. The biggest dis­ad­van­tage for employees working from home is that as a manager, you cannot check whether and for how long employees are actually working on the tasks assigned to them. However, there are several tools that can be used to better un­der­stand employee activity. This is useful in order to better assess workloads, and see how pro­duc­tive employees are when they start working from home. If you want a detailed breakdown of exactly how long the tasks take, you can give more detailed in­struc­tions, or have your employees account for their time worked. By doing this, employees can protect them­selves from over­work­ing when working from home – which can happen faster than some people think, since the lines between work and private lives can quickly blur.

When working from home, employees are just as dependent on accessing data and documents as they may be in the actual office. An efficient way to store, share, and back up data is to use a cloud storage. In the cloud, all your employees can access stored data and share it with their col­leagues directly over the internet. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, you can au­to­mat­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nize the data with a cloud backup to prevent losing documents that are important for business op­er­a­tions.

Even if employees are given the op­por­tu­ni­ty to start working from home, only company-owned devices should be used. Private computers are often too vul­ner­a­ble to malware and therefore not safe from data theft.

Anyone who in­tro­duces working from home and is generally dealing with a lot of sensitive company in­for­ma­tion should try to prevent data loss by having a high level of security. The most important point here is having the best possible disk en­cryp­tion, which will also inform the data pro­tec­tion authority in the event of theft.

As soon as employers start working from home, intensive data pro­tec­tion training must be provided to staff. This should include helping employees secure the private network. In par­tic­u­lar, rec­om­mend­ing pro­ce­dures or tools that generate secure passwords should be on the agenda.

In addition, employees must be informed that company data cannot be stored on external storage media like USB sticks or hard drives. A secure solution for storing, sending, and backing up data should be provided by the company in return and set up ac­cord­ing­ly.

Topics like phishing and pharming should be addressed. The general un­cer­tain­ty when handling sus­pi­cious emails and websites can lead to in­for­ma­tion being handled care­less­ly on the internet. Be sure to mention SSL cer­tifi­cates, as these will be valuable to employees.

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is essential to make working from home viable in many companies. The virtual networks can be accessed from any location, but you need the ap­pro­pri­ate measures in place. The Internet serves as an extension for employees working from home to access the company’s internal VPN network. This ensures that only au­tho­rized employees or business partners have access to files or in­for­ma­tion on the intranet or on the corporate server.

For many companies, using an intranet is generally a good idea. In addition, files stored in archives can be made available to employees and you can create your own wiki pages using processes and methods. Or­ga­ni­za­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion always come first on an intranet, which makes the internal network an almost in­dis­pens­able tool for working from home.

Thanks to carefully selected col­lab­o­ra­tion tools, meetings can easily be held online when working from home, and employees can use online com­mu­ni­ca­tion channels. With tools like Slack, Google Hangouts or WebEx, one can schedule virtual meetings and hold high quality video con­fer­ences and pre­sen­ta­tions. Most software solutions can be installed across platforms on laptops, tablets, and smart­phones. In addition, normal phone calls are also a good option to com­mu­ni­cate. With the right software, you can use your phone con­nec­tion on the computer to make and receive calls using your normal phone number.

If you need constant updates on a project’s status and mile­stones, you don’t need to request regular reports. Using project man­age­ment tools, every employee can provide project updates them­selves while working from home, and con­tribute ef­fi­cient­ly to teamwork. In the meantime, there are many available programs for small and large companies, with various functions – some are com­plete­ly free of charge.

One of the most important things to remember when you start in­tro­duc­ing a remote working policy is employee mo­ti­va­tion. Not everyone wants to or can work from home. However, as a manager or managing director, there are certain methods you can use to increase work ethic and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty among your staff.

If you don’t check in with your staff regularly, it’s hard to know whether work is being done correctly. Having regular per­for­mance reviews is very important for employees who start working from home. Regular exchanges, even in­for­mal­ly, help set goals and enable managers to un­der­stand what level projects and employees are at.

Many companies use stand up meetings in the morning to give a brief overview of mile­stones and project updates. All employees and managers have a chance to com­mu­ni­cate with one another other about their work, even if they’re not in the same de­part­ment.

Weekly con­fer­ence calls should be used to provide general feedback to the team, for example, to inform them of the week’s achieve­ments. In addition, you can use these calls to share personal ex­pe­ri­ences while working from home. In this way, employees can give each other tips and help motivate each other. This strength­ens the team spirit even across long distances.

If you set core working hours and breaks in advance, you can also provide employees with struc­tured working times when they begin working from home. It may seem in­signif­i­cant at first sight, but it has a great psy­cho­log­i­cal impact on workers. Having a struc­tured time frame makes it easier to plan the day in your own home.

Before starting to introduce a working from home policy, you should check that all your employees have the materials they need to be able to work from home. An ergonomic chair and the right technical equipment are important for employees to be able to do their work, and such tools can also have a psy­cho­log­i­cal impact. The optimal home en­vi­ron­ment is a private, lockable room with a desk and office chair. By making a note of the home working setup of your employees, you can quickly assess whether ad­di­tion­al equipment may be necessary.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between col­leagues is important to maintain a good work ethic and a high team spirit. When working from home, small talk, and office chit chat no longer exists and many people can quickly feel isolated. As a manager, it is important to com­mu­ni­cate with one another through  chat programs. Short con­ver­sa­tions and exchanges with others can help make employees working from home feel more com­fort­able and they will ul­ti­mate­ly be more pro­duc­tive.

Those working from home for the first time may feel lost to begin with. It is es­pe­cial­ly important to structure tasks for them. To-do lists help enor­mous­ly with es­tab­lish­ing normal struc­tures and processes when working from home.

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