Working Remotely? Here’s how you can be efficient!
Remote work culture is future and the future is already here!
In one of our previous blogs, we talked about remote work culture and whether we(India) should give it a try? In this blog, we will talk about how you can set up a remote team, how can you be an efficient remote employee and what all things you will need to do/setup.
Disclaimer- Things discussed below are NOT mandatory or “must do”, but are recommended for being efficient. Let’s have a look at those.
Setting up your home office and its essentials
Home office?? A home office is a place in your home dedicated to your work and it can be as simple as a table and a chair. That’s it!! You don’t need to think of it as some fancy work setup!
Importance of home office setup
When we talk about efficiency, it’s a human tendency that we cannot sit for long hours by keeping your laptop on your lap and working! Also, it is not a good body posture to be seated in. Moreover, if you sit on a cushion, then you will start feeling sleepy. At least I do! So you won’t be able to focus on the task at hand.
What do you need?
- A table and comfortable chair (a simple small study table will also do).
- Good quality webcam (if you do a lot of video conferencing).
- Good quality headphones/earphones with mic (having a dedicated mic helps in reducing surrounding noise).
Resources needed to efficiently collaborate with your team
When we work remotely, collaborating with your teammates becomes a bit difficult for obvious reasons. As compared to an office environment, you cannot just walk past a lobby and have a one-to-one conversation with your teammates/managers. How can you overcome this situation remotely and still be efficient communicators over a distance?
Let’s have a look at some resources that you can use to stay in touch with your colleagues in a remote work setup.
- Video Conferencing- There are many video conferencing platforms you can use to have meetings or even one-to-one conversation with your teammates. E.g. Zoom, Google Meet or Hangouts, Skype for business, GoToMeeting, etc.
- Cloud Storage- You can use cloud-hosted drive solutions to keep your project-related documents in one place securely so that concerned ones can have access to it.
- Task Management- Setup your teams on task management applications. These applications provide you with a free account and best features if you have a very small team. These applications help you monitor your team and help everyone be on the same page. According to me, Jira is probably the best general-purpose application for task management. You can use it for your team’s task management purpose no matter what your industry/domain of operation is. There are many other applications as well such as Trello, Asana, Basecamp, etc. Here is a list of such applications.
- Communication- You can always create a WhatsApp group for faster communication but it is advised that you also create your team’s communication channels on platforms like Slack, Ryver, Jabber etc.
These are common resources that any team requires to operate efficiently. You may want to use additional tools specific to your work domain.
Types of Remote Teams
Now that you know what home office is and what all you need to collaborate efficiently, let’s see some types of remote teams.
- All remote- This is the type where all of the team members work remotely. This also means that your company might not have a physical presence.
- Hybrid- In this type of setup, some people work from a designated office and others work never or rarely work from the office. Suppose you are a team leader who works remotely and your team works together in an office setup can be example of hybrid team. Also, the reverse scenario is possible where you lead the team from office and your team works remotely. In simple terms, any of the entity can be remotely working.
- Split- Now this type of team may sound confusing at first. Let's try!
Ready it carefully- In this type, there is a designated office but teams are not always present in office i.e. they might be at customer locations, they might be travelling two days a week or they might work from home two days a week, or similar reasons.
In a recent study conducted by EconomicTimes, it is observed that 99.8% of the workforce is incapable of remote working!Shocking right?
Well tighten your seatbelt and acquire this new skill set. Being an efficient remote worker is very rare today, so look at this as an opportunity and be one!
This blog is a short summary of the course offered by LinkedIn Learning. For more details, do check out this course.
Stay tuned for more such blogs, till then keep reading, keep learning and be efficient! Happy Weekend!
