Overcoming the challenges of working from home with a web meeting

Working from home part-time or full-time can be favourable for some employees. Not only is the requirement to commute significantly reduced, employees are not required to dress in business attire and whilst drinking your favourite coffee. What is there not to love?

However, working from home can come with pitfalls for even the most mentally strong employee. The temptation to have your favourite daytime TV on in the background soon turns to a thirty minute break to watch the interview with that actor you so eagerly follow. A two minute phone call from a relative turns into an hour discussion about the next family event. Without those invisible pressures, we are exposed to within the office, we can easily be distracted from our task in hand.

Additionally, working from home can be lonely at times with no social interaction with colleagues throughout the day. The office is an area we socialise whilst working. We regularly bounce ideas off our colleagues to test the water and gather more thoughts than just our own. These points can reduce your productivity without identifying them as potential hurdles to your work.

So, how can we make working from home as effective, if not more effective, than working within the office?

Set daily and weekly objectives
It may be hard to initially set yourself these aims and goals or feel it isn’t necessary. But the first key to success of working from home is to be your own boss. Be strict with yourself and be sure to be on hand with your emails whilst removing yourself from possible distractions.

Have a designated area for work
Using the sofa may be comfy and seem like the perfect place for you to work from. Google do it, so it must be a good idea right? Well, who are we to argue. It clearly works for one of the largest companies in the world, as a break area and not as a permanent place of work.

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Work the hours you normally would in the office
Flexible working hours are increasingly popular when working within the office. The flexibility at home, in a more casual environment without the strict ruling of management, can easily become ineffective and disrupt your working mentality. Feel like you can start an hour earlier and have the stamina to work an hour later?

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Schedule a web meeting for… well every meeting
Do not try and replace a meeting with a simple email or an email chain. There comes a point where you will need to climb online and meet with your colleagues in a web meeting. Schedule a web meeting for the start and end of your day indeed throughout your day — team interaction is vital.

What’s more, Drum embeds inside your branded experience whether that be your existing website, portal or service. Hosting and attending meetings are now branded to your experience. Have your employees or clients meet within your brand with no importance on whether you are working from the office or from home, giving them the same level of experience.

Working from home provides a great work-life balance the majority of us strive to achieve. Reducing tiring commutes and travel pollution/ opening up the world with no geographical/logistical barriers to business. Traditionally, employers prefer to have employees inside the office within the working environment. However, with flexible working becoming something of the now, employers are becoming more open to experiment with alternative and flexible methods of working. Additional solutions, such as a web meeting and unlimited vacation days, make working from home more accessible for both the employee and the employer.

What is holding you back from working from home and using a web meeting tool to interact with your colleagues and clients?