Working From Home

Read below for tips and best practices for employees working remotely.

Create an optimal workspace. This should be quiet, have good lighting, and be comfortable.
Organize yourself with tools such as headphones, notebooks, and coffee.
Turn off or limit sight and sound distractions such as loud music, television, and other devices.

Set expectations with management and coworkers. Communication is key! Make sure your coworkers know when you will be available for meetings.

Create a plan as a team for the best way to communicate: phone call, text, email, video confrence?
Communicate your availability and work hours and find out your coworker's availability and hours.
If something is time-sensitive, make sure you have a plan in place so the project is not delayed.

Set clear, defined goals and milestones.
Determine the stakeholders of your projects, tasks, workload such as your managers, team/coworkers, clients, etc.
Set timelines of things you want to accomplish and prioritized lists.

Create and stick to a routine. Commit to a regular schedule.
Just because you’re home, doesn’t mean you’re available for personal chores, errands, housework.
Keep your work in your designated workspace and personal items in your relaxing spaces.

While working from home, it is important to build boundaries with your loved ones.

Talk about when it is work time vs downtime/playtime and family time.
Create tasks, jobs, activities in advance for kids or other loved ones to do.
Children are used to structured and scheduled days at school and daycare. Keep to your schedule as best as possible.
Build-in buffer time to your schedule.
- What is buffer time? Empty space and nothing time!
- Why is this important? This will help you manage interruptions and emergencies that come up in the day.
- Recommended buffer time for an 8-hour workday is 1-2 hours.
- If there are limited or no interruptions, you will end your day early and feel productive.
Discuss responsibilities with your partner. If you are both at home, who is doing housework and when? If only one of you is home, understand that they are working, and should not be solely responsible for chores. (Just like you can’t do house chores from your job!)

Create separation of work and home.
Avoid overworking by setting a schedule with start and end work times. Set alarms and alerts for when these hit.
Set expectations with coworkers. Just because you get an email at 8 pm doesn’t mean you will immediately respond.
You need transition time from the end of the workday to home time. Typically, this is your commute. Without a commute, take a walk, go outside, or come up with another activity that signifies the end of the workday.
Make meaningful breaks a top priority throughout the day.

This is not an exhaustive list, but some platforms to consider when working as a remote team.