Celebrating ‘Work From Home’ Day
May 19th was National Work From Home day — did you mark the occasion?
Around 4.2 million UK workers now work from home at least two days per week, and technology makes it simpler than ever before.
A well-executed remote working strategy can pay big dividends for businesses, especially SMEs that want to reduce infrastructure costs. It’s also great for staff who, unsurprisingly, are more attracted to roles that can offer this option.
Here are some tips we’ve picked up from the SMEs that work with CircleLoop.
Don’t let staff work too hard
Yes, you read that right. Productivity gains from home working average 13%, a lot of which is attributed to greater flexibility and no commuting time.
However, some of the gains are linked to longer working hours put in by staff who overcompensate for the lack of structure. While most people doing 9–5 start watching the clock just after lunch, those working from home want to prove they’re using their time well.
It’s the exact opposite of what most managers fear, and it’s something they need to keep eye on to prevent staff burning themselves out.
The best advice we’ve heard is to keep in regular contact with offsite staff. Be unambiguous with praise, or constructive feedback, so they know that they’re hitting their targets. Remember that under-working is usually pretty obvious, but over-working can be hard to spot.
Which industries work from home the most?
Put the proper technology in place
One of the biggest drivers for home working has been the rise of cloud-based collaborative technologies.
With services like Google docs, Asana, and Slack, it really doesn’t matter where you are when you’re working. There is one area of technology where this has not been the case though, and that’s telephony.
For all that VoiP and mobile have helped, employees have not been able to take their business landlines homes with them. CircleLoop aims to solve that problem by enabling full business communications to go wherever staff go.
Bring staff together to socialise
A little over a quarter of employees who exit a company within their first year cite a feeling of disconnection as their main reason.
The new remote-working regime might mean that your staff are spread across the country, or even the world. In that case, there won’t be much chance to organise karaoke nights. But you can still get staff talking about their personal lives in the next team briefing, to prevent them being ‘colleagues and strangers’.
If your staff aren’t hundreds of miles apart, there’s no excuse not to bring them together once in a while for social events. You’ll be amazed at the impact well integrated staff can have on retention and sense of engagement.
70% of UK businesses will be offering home-working options by 2020 — it will cease to be a perk and become an expectation, and soon. Are you ready?
There are a lot of technology solutions to consider for employee collaboration, but only one for telephony. CircleLoop ensures that your business presence follows your staff wherever they’re working, while slashing your costs.
There’s no time like the present; find out more now.
