Work From Home Tips During COVID-19 Outbreak: Be More Productive and Efficient

Let’s see, how we at KrishaWeb managed this situation…

Work From Home (Image Source: KrishaWeb)

Some insights on Work From Home for KrishaWeb as a whole

Due to the COVID-19 outbreak around the world, working from home is no longer considered as a privilege rather it is mandatory for people. The pandemic has been so massive that every company is forced to operate from home only. Nowadays the “mantra” of staying safe is to stay at your home only.

How COVID-19 Forces IT Companies for “Work From Home”

We have only 2 options to choose from to cope with the pandemic.

1. Work as usual and let the economy flourish. Here you are keeping yourself on risk.
2. Lockdown yourself and save yourself. Here you are affecting your economy.

The intensity of the coronavirus is unbelievable and there is no cure to it yet. The figures of infected cases and the death toll is increasing exponentially across the globe. Here we need a clever decision and Work Form Home is only the solution to it. WFH is helping keep you safe and holding your economy at a certain level too. No doubt we are not sure about the future as of now.

The majority of all companies have decided to give all the employees a chance of working from home. Fortunately, even without any sort of advance plan, there are plenty of things you can do to make working from home as an emergency success. Many of the businesses are struggling to operate but IT is one of the industries where we are picking up the nerve of it.

The world is at stake but you cannot put a stop on your projects or given assignments. When you are working from home, communication becomes very vital. Staying connected and keeping your eyes on the official communication becomes paramount. Be proactive and remain available otherwise your single miscommunication can break the deal between you and your customer. Try to monitor each and every official message of your company regarding emergency plans appropriately.

“Work From Home” Best Practices

We believe that every company must create some of the particular guidelines to ensure all the employees understand what is required from them when they work remotely. There are a few key elements of working remote.

We are trying to touch base some of the most important elements here which include

Use of Technology

Few necessary items that an employee has to have worked from home are computer, facility of managing telephonic conferencing, access to internal networks as well as few small but essential things like headphones with mic, an alternative arrangement of the Internet and of course a good sitting arrangement where they can sit for hours and work efficiently. These tools are quite significant for the habit of working from home.

Secure Connection

Working from home cannot be done without a stable network and which is why the remote workers must have a safe and protected Wi-Fi network and also work along with the trusted and proper virtual private network (VPN). Eventually, the VPN serves as the buffer between the Wi-Fi connection and also your mobile device or the computer. Any kind of transmitted data is then encrypted to protect this from tampering and interception.

Establishing a link between different departments

Everybody from the team needs to stay in touch with one another and for that communication plays a very significant role. Skype, Teams, Slack and some other messaging apps will help you stay connected with the team members. At times, the remote workers can feel isolated from the rest of the team, so this is significant to keep in contact with them via phone, email, messaging, or video conference.

Setting clear expectations in your “Work From Home” policy

Work from home policy has to be clear and straight. Try to create the policy with a few expectations of the program and that includes daily work schedule, company’s project execution policy, description of workspace, instructions for reporting personal injury and also damage to company equipment, and protection of proprietary company information.

Software and Apps that You Need

During the pandemic, as people are lockdown, and completing their jobs from home only, they will need a few apps and software to stay in touch with their companies and organizations. These apps are mainly used in various purposes such as Project Planning, Project Management, Work allocation and meeting or communication as well.

For Company Management

• Hubspot: HubSpot offers a full platform of marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software — plus the methodology, resources, and support — to help businesses grow better. You can get started with free tools, and upgrade as you grow.
• Xero: This is an Invoicing software which is very useful for any company majorly dealing with multiple countries. It provides the facility to manage bill in multi-currency as well as from one license, you can run multiple companies too. You can reconcile your bank with the software with proper authentication too.
• RelyOn: A software that is majorly used for tax & e-filing, Payroll and Accounting of our Indian operations team. It gives a regular update and it remains all time up to date. Their support and service are up to the mark.

For Work Allocation and Management

• MIS: We have an inhouse software which we use to track our day to day billable and non-billable hours. We have all the projects added to it with limited or more access to different resources. We have Project Managers and Team Leads who are managing it successfully and we can keep a track of each project with the help of it. We use it for our day to day task allocation as well.
• Dropbox: Working on the go can be quite frustrating, especially if you forget to load the right files on your own device or tablet. With Dropbox, you will not have to face this kind of issue, because this specific app permits you to access the stored files from any device with an Internet connection. This app is quite helpful in storing a lot of files. The best part is that you will get the option of sharing the files safely and securely with clients or your coworkers.
• Zoho One: It has also gained massive popularity amongst the users as this is helpful for CRM, Sales, Marketing, Support, HR, Accounting and Operations. Sharing data, spreadsheets, documents and other important things whenever you are working from home with full-fledged Email, Calendar along with the Contacts packed into one single app, Zoho One is considered as one of the best tools to use for remote work.
• Basecamp: This is one of the best software we found to use for customer communication with the team of the project. It gives the facility of Message board, To-Dos, Docs & Files, Campfire (common area for sharing message), Schedule and Automatic check-ins. The tool is really good as the cost of it is very liberal as compared to the facility they are providing. It is one of the best tools when you are dealing with B2C type of clients those who don’t know much about technical stuff.
• Asana: If now you are working solo or collaborating remotely, Asana is mainly known as one of the fully-featured, easy-to-use project management platforms. The best part is that each and every user out there simply keeps the track of tasks and subtasks, assign work to other people on your team, track milestones and also some other project development, and more. Users will get the chance of setting this up to send you some of the reminders and the notifications for only about anything like when the team member actually posts any of the tasks or even any sort of upcoming project is due as well. Asana is quite beneficial to upload any kind of file and then share it as well.
• To-Dos List Evernote: Apart from the above-mentioned apps and software, Evernote & OneNote have gained massive popularity amongst the users who are working from home in this quarantine days. One of the interesting facts about this app is that you will be able to make some of the to-do lists and jot down any kind of notes as well. Apart from writing the notes down, you will be able to take photos and then make voice recordings as well. This app also helps you to note down everything, which you have scheduled for the future.

For Meeting and Communication

• Skype: Skype is one of the important and useful applications that you require while chatting with your colleagues, boss, clients or any other personnel during office hours. This one provides the capability to make calls, instant chat, video chat, and use SMS messaging and all from the same interface.
• Slack: In these days, slack is considered as one of the very popular and beneficial apps, which helps one to communicate properly. This helps to message, share and edit the files and different documents and it is also used across the devices as well. It is used as a collaborative tool to connect the project-wise team. Like most other collaboration apps, there are paid and free plans available.

Explore about all the Softwares and online applications at Work From Home Tips during COVID-19 Outbreak…