Top 10 Tips for Remote Working
As a business, Atrium Sports has a significant remote workforce around the globe with some of our employees having accrued many years of experience working from home, or WFH. Bruce Irvine, Director of Development at Atrium Sports based remotely in Dallas, Texas is one such member of staff who we’ve asked to provide some guidance and advise.
With many people around the world currently attempting to come to terms with remote working for the first time, we’re sharing Bruce’s top 10 tips from both a productivity and a mental health and wellbeing perspective.
1. Behave like you’re going into an office and set a routine
While not getting dressed (don’t pretend you haven’t at least thought about it!) before starting work can seem like a luxury for a few days, it can damage your productivity and sense of purpose in the long run. A lot of how we work is psychological, and the routines we associate with working are a key part of that.
Set a routine. Make sure you get up and have breakfast like you normally would — don’t be tempted to go straight to your computer — before you start work, even if you do decide to start a little earlier thanks to the benefit of not having to commute.
2. Schedule a dedicated Lunch time
Similar to our first point, it can be easy to merge a meal with working and end up eating at your desk. Instead, assuming your workload and schedule allows, take the time out. It is mentally refreshing to get away from your workspace and you can also use it to get some fresh air, some sunshine or another activity that recharges you.
3. Know When to Stop
When your home office is a 10 second commute away, it can be easy for the lines of working and not working to blur. Learn when to shut the door and walk away.
4. Flexibility
Depending on your role and business, normal office hours often don’t necessarily have the same significance. If you’re productive in the morning, why not start earlier? If you’re a night owl, why not schedule your day accordingly? If your work and colleagues are onboard with this flexibility, you can often schedule some exercise or something else you find therapeutic during the day.
5. Listen to Podcasts and Music
Many people find that music helps them to concentrate and can help create a more vibrant atmosphere than a silent room working on your own would otherwise provide. Similarly, podcasts can provide a fun or informative background to your daily tasks. This is likely selective and dependent on what you’re working on — some may embrace the lack of distractions that silence offers.
6. Be Proactive with communication — with both colleagues and friends
In Buffer’s State of Remote Work survey from 2019, one of the biggest issues with remote working from respondents was a feeling of loneliness. Both with colleagues during your work time, and with friends and family during your free time, be proactive with staying in touch. This is doubly important for anyone who lives alone and may otherwise spend significant time without direct communication. Face to face (be that FaceTime, Skype, Slack, Hangouts, Whatsapp or similar is better) because you can’t replicate the value that non verbal communication adds to your day.
7. Be Mindful of your Posture
Depending on where in your home you’re working, the chair you’re sitting on and the desk you’re using, you may be spending extended periods of time in a position that encourages bad posture. Over a number of days and weeks this could lead to shoulder, back, neck or headache issues. Counter this with both mindfulness of your positioning and also regularly standing, stretching and perhaps shifting your position during the day.
8. Provide Updates
Be aware that one of the challenges of remote working can be a lack of visibility on progress or tasks that are either cooperative or relied upon by other team members. Regular progress checks and catch up calls help keep everyone informed and ensures everyone maintains the same expectations for timelines.
9. Chase Information
Sometimes you reach a sticking point with a particular task without additional information or knowledge. Always be quick and proactive to ask for the information you need. Never worry that you’re asking a stupid question or that you’re inconveniencing someone. There is a strong chance someone else will also need the same answer to your question and if the answer isn’t immediately available, it can be worked into someone’s priority list.
10. Embrace Technology
There has never been a better time to work productively from your home or an alternative location. We already alluded to some of the communication channels for video and messaging to reduce the loss that occurs from not being in the same physical location. The same can be said for project management, CMS, email management, decision making (pooling free times for meetings or similar) and anything important to your role. If there is something important to your team that takes significant time, there’s a strong chance there’s at least one tool that can help you be more efficient.
Everyone is different in how they work most effectively, but hopefully the above will help fast track you to being just as effective remotely. In addition to our team members who work remotely full time, we also have people experiencing it for the first time. We’ll follow up with input from our team members with their perspectives on what they’ve learned and what they wished they’d known at the outset of their remote working experience.
Atrium Sports is changing how sport is organised, played, commercialised and experienced around the world.
Atrium Sports puts best practice technologies within reach of sports at every level, to enable them to create new content, engage fans and open commercial opportunities that help grow sport.
