“Maintaining the Work from
Home culture among employees for your startup”
While many of us are used to swanky offices in tony districts of our
cities and whether we are ready or not, COVID-19 has transitioned many
companies to enable remote work at scale.
So, how can organizations seize the opportunity and think long-term?
Thankfully, most organizations are equipping and
have equipped themselves to continue business-as-usual by suddenly shifting
gears and adopting work-from-home practices.
But working-from-home comes with its own set of unique challenges—both
for the employees and employers.
So how to make sure employees are engaged and motivated even when they
are away from their traditional work environment?
Some of the ways that can maximise the
effectiveness of your new Work-From-Home setting:
Community Building
When employees suddenly start working away from their regular setting,
they are bound to feel a little lost and demotivated. The working style of a
regular 9 to 5 worker is quite different than someone who has always worked
remotely. And this sudden transition can massively hamper the internal
communication of the organization. The scarier part is that nobody knows how
long this arrangement has to last.
To keep the workflows moving, create a virtual office for employees.
Invest in the best video conferencing and collaboration tools. Create a forum
for employees to share personal as well as professional updates. Try to assign collaborative
tasks weekly, encouraging team members to work together and stay connected.
Further, to keep up their morale and boost their moods, you can create
virtual team activities like online multiplayer games, quizzes. Or you can even
encourage them to learn new things and share them with their colleagues.
Some organizations, like Gitlab, have adopted a virtual coffee break.
These are video calls where employees connect virtually to take breaks,
socialize, have their water cooler conversations. These conversations seem
effective in preventing potential burnout and isolation.
Keep them engaged with Recognition
Recognition in the workplace is quintessential for the overall success
of the organization. When you acknowledge your employees for their outstanding
work on time, they feel rejoiced for their contributions. It fuels their zeal
to do better and earn appreciation from their managers and peers.
Engage with fun
Conduct periodic surveys to check with employees about what employees
are thinking, feeling and doing. What motivates them? What virtual ways to
connect do they enjoy most? What do they feel about this culture change around
work?
Understanding what your people are going through will give you a much
clearer idea about how you should deal with the situation. Also, in each piece
of work that needs to be done, you can add elements of fun through gamification to
make work more enjoyable.70% of Forbes Global 2000 companies will use
gamification to boost engagement, retention and revenues.
Encourage Learning
It's a great time for employees to learn what they have always wanted to
and a great time for managers to facilitate that. Many companies have invested
in e-learning platform and employees will be able to learn new skills and
upskill their existing skills in the extra hours that they are getting every
day due to the current situation of working from home.
One of the top seeking criteria for employees at work is personal and
professional development. They love to be in a job that helps them learn new
skills and grow as individuals. When an organization promotes learning among
employees, it will instinctively keep them motivated and engaged. Today, most
employees want to get trained on the skills of tomorrow, especially courses
like AI, Machine Learning & Data Analytics are top-rated across industries.
You can also encourage your employees to take up non-work-related
courses. Online learning platforms offer a wide range of courses from music to
playing various instruments to creative arts to self-defence. These courses can
prove to be great mood boosters and stress-reliever for your employees.
Offer Employee Perks and Discounts
Giving away some perks and discounts is another great way to keep
employees motivated to contribute towards their organization no matter if
they're in the office or working remotely. Some of these employee perks include
things like exclusive corporate deals from various brands, cashback offers,
subsidized insurance plans, tie-ups with hospitals, gift cards, subscription
plans and more.
Provide Support for Equipment and other necessities
The mantra of any good work lies in two things, i.e. the skill of a
person and the tools at their disposal. Modern offices are generally equipped
with state-of-art tools and technologies. These have a direct correlation with
the quality of work. When employees work-from-home, this becomes a massive
hurdle typically to your employees' productivity.
When employees are operating from home, it doesn't mean that they won't
be requiring the right pieces of equipment or other necessities. Most of the
time, it is the employees who bear the cost of getting the tools and other
resources they need for the job. If buying laptops in bulk in this scenario is
not feasible, you should offer compensation or discount offers plans for them.
Promote Health and Wellness
With the current outbreak of the corona virus, keeping up good health
has become a matter of utmost importance. With the pandemic forcing employees
to isolate themselves, staying indoors for long periods is severely going to
impact their mental and physical health. They must be missing out on their gym
routines and physical activity, in general, must have drastically reduced.
A mobile wellness application will enable employees to take part in
various health tasks which can be easily done while staying indoors. A program
that can look after your employees' wellbeing and at the same time, keep them
active is quite a thoughtful step that employers and managers can take.
Re-examine relationship between organizations and employees
The COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity for organizations to elevate their
corporate culture and make it mutually beneficial. It's important that the
organization (managers) display trust in their team at this point. Most
managers now have made it mandatory for the team to report deliverables every
day, which was not the case before this outbreak. Simple replication of the
style of working at the office can help make employees feel trusted and thereby
reduce stress and enhance efficiency.
Conclusion
The entire world has been hit by a pandemic that has no cure yet, and
the only proven prevention is maintaining social distance. Adopting
work-from-home practices is the most viable and responsible way to deal with
this situation. It is the only way of sustaining your business in a time of
global crisis like this one. Thanks to technology, working-from-home can now be
remarkably smooth and productive.
It is not only the role of the Top management, HR, the leaders or
managers but also of the employees to make these measures a success and emerge
through this as stronger than before.
Some links that I found very useful are below:
·
Fist-hand experience of Coronavirus
·
Video from World Economic Forum
·
A blog by an employee about managing
WFH
·
Resources to keep to engaged during
quarantine
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