How Your Business Can Support WFH Employees

As we near the end of 2020, working from home seems to have become the new norm. We don’t know when the COVID-19 pandemic will disappear, and as a result, some businesses are not taking the risk of bringing their employees back to the workplace. By allowing employees to work from home, you prevent unnecessary contact between not only employees but also clients, suppliers, and others. However, allowing employees to work from home doesn’t just mean providing them with a laptop and then just abandoning them. Just like the office, people working from home need support.

In this guide, we want to look at some of the challenges that both businesses and workers face when WFH. Then, we’ll share some useful advice to make this a winning arrangement for all parties.

Biggest Challenges with Remote Working

As a business, we naturally look at remote working from a business perspective. But now it’s time to think about the individuals who contribute to our teams. What difficulties do these individuals face when away from the office environment?

Lack of Information — Firstly, accessing information often takes lots more time and effort. For example, those new to working from home often underestimate the extra time required just to get a simple piece of information from a colleague; it’s not just a case of shouting something across the office. Instead, it means sending an email and waiting for a reply. Even with effective internal communications tools, it still takes more time to access information.

No Understanding of Moods — This might sound like a strange one, but knowing someone’s mood on any given day is essential to an effective and efficient workforce. If you know somebody has had a bad week, you can overlook a tetchy email. When you don’t have this information and can’t experience someone’s body language, you don’t know the stress of the individual and how they have been coping with the WFH environment. More workers can take offense to brusque messages, causing relationships to deteriorate.

Poor Supervision — This can be a concern from both sides. You probably worry about the productivity of employees at home; it’s important to know that your employees are probably worrying about this too. As noted with colleagues, employees no longer have the ability to quickly pop into the manager’s office to ask a question. Although employees will complain about managers breathing down their necks, often it’s these check-ins from managers that keep them on the right path during the working day.

Back in 2017, Harvard Business Review did a survey of over 1,150 employees who spent some time working from home. Sadly, almost 85% of participants said that small issues dragged on over a period of days rather than getting resolved quickly. Around half said that the best managers for WFH employees were the ones that checked in regularly. In the study, there were also suggestions that employees at home felt left out and shunned. It’s different when the whole workforce is at home, but the study gives insight relating to how workers feel about WFH.

Distractions — When in an office, we’re in the work environment; our brains know to be productive. At home, it’s natural to get distracted whether it’s by the TV, mobile phone, washing, chores, or other people. On a biological level, the mind struggles to get productive because we’re in an environment where we also relax, spend time with family, and normally, get away from work. Now, we’re asking employees to use this space to do their work.

Beginners typically:

• Start working in their nightgown on the sofa
• Have a shower half-way through the morning
• Invite friends over for lunch
• Keep their kids at home rather than sending them to a relative or childcare service

Essentially, they will do things they otherwise wouldn’t do in the office. As we can see, one of the ways a business can support employees is by encouraging them to maintain the same routines. This is one of the steps to overcome the MANY distractions at home.

Isolation — Finally, isolation should never be forgotten in a world where mental health problems are prominent in society. For those who live alone, working in an office is actually an essential social interaction. Some people need workplace interactions, and these employees can suffer when they work from home day after day. Of course, other opportunities to socialize are also limited right now.

Depending on how long the pandemic continues, employees can feel alone and as though they’re no longer a part of the business or community. Without the right care, these workers might leave the company completely.

Supporting WFH Employees

We’ve discovered the biggest challenges, so how do you tackle them and support employees? As we’re going to see, you want to help them as not only employees, but humans too.

Daily Check-Ins — This is easier for small teams, but we advise team leaders to check in with their workers every single day. For some workers, the traditional water cooler chats are actually pivotal. With daily check-ins, workers feel valued, remain connected to the business, and get to interact with somebody other than a family member. While some businesses do one-on-one conversations on the phone or through a video call, others do the calls in small groups. Sometimes the latter is better because it keeps colleagues connected.

Due to the pandemic this year, lots of effective video call tools have emerged, so make use of them. Also, don’t just talk about business. If you have a 60-minute video call every morning, set aside 10 minutes for personal chats. Tell the team that there are 10 minutes where business talk is banned.

Offer the Right Tools — If email is the only available collaboration tool for your team, communication will suffer, and inefficiencies will occur. Previously, employees would have loathed video calls when working from home, because the practice was rare. Now that it’s commonplace, video calls are welcome, so provide your team with the tools they need.

We recommend introducing all sorts of different systems to encourage the same level of collaboration you’d get in the office. For example, you might explore Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more. Despite popular belief, you don’t necessarily need to break the budget just to use collaboration tools. Speak with your IT team to see which platforms are affordable and effective at the moment.

Have Universal Communication Rules — When should employees get in touch? What system should they use? For instance, we recently saw a business introduce the following rules:

• Daily check-ins occur on Zoom
• Urgent matters go through instant messaging (like Slack)
• No communication after 8pm

With rules of engagement, everybody knows when to reach out with a problem and, more importantly, how to contact team members. When workers have an emergency, they need to know that their message is seen. If some people want to work later hours, this is great, but they shouldn’t aggravate colleagues with messages after 8pm.

Encourage Positive Habits — Not everybody has worked from home before, so create some materials for the beginners. With a simple email, you can encourage positive habits such as:

• Having a dedicated workspace to differentiate between work and rest
• Keeping personal devices away from the workspace
• Using the same routine as if they were heading to the office (this might include a shower and breakfast before heading to the workspace)
• Leaving children with relatives or with a babysitter (unless this isn’t possible due to the pandemic!)
• Getting dressed in the morning rather than working in pajamas

Offer Emotional Support — As a leader in the business, you need to instill calmness in all workers. Working from home can sadly lead to negative emotions, so it’s important to set the tone with an upbeat yet relaxed persona. Make the check-ins, tell employees that you’re available when they need anything, and be present on all the tools that the team is using. Emotional support also means advice for a positive lifestyle while working from home; this could mean encouraging quality sleep, exercise, and more.

Split all employees into groups between the leadership team to make wellness calls to employees where work isn’t the priority.

Arrange Team Building Events — You can’t meet in person, but this doesn’t mean that all non-work interactions need to end. Along with the ten minutes in the daily meeting, can you arrange a virtual trivia night for all employees? Can you set up a virtual burger and beer night?

Bonus Tips

Here are some bonus tips to finish:

• Encourage professional development (to prevent stagnation)
• Manage workloads
• Reward loyalty
• Get feedback for how to make the experience better for workers

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