Tip of the Week: Basic Best Practices for Working from Home

When it comes to ensuring your productivity when working from home, how you do that work matters—both in terms of the technology you put to use, and the habits you develop in order to be productive. Here, we wanted to share a few tips to help you on both fronts. That way, you’re even more likely to enjoy the optimum productivity that’s possible while working remotely.

The Tech

Make sure your at-home workstation has the hardware you need to be productive. To work remotely with any similarity to how you work in the office, you’ll need to have the means to complete the same tasks as you could in the workplace. While you may not necessarily have the same setup as in the office, you should have something more than a cell phone to work on.

Use cloud solutions to enable access to data and software. In the same vein, hardware is only half of the productivity equation. Without the means to access your programs and the data you’ll need to use them properly, not much can be accomplished. Cloud-hosted solutions and data make these resources much more accessible while working remotely.

If connecting back to the office, use an encrypted VPN. If you elect to instead connect remotely to your in-office infrastructure, make sure that this is only done via a connection through a virtual private network, or VPN. This helps to protect sensitive data from being stolen or spied upon while in transit.

The Tips

Keep regular working hours. Many people find it easy to work for longer than they are scheduled to while working from home. Firmly discourage this, as it can lead to increased rates of burnout, especially if maintained for an extended period.

Establish an area to work in. When it comes to work processes, the home has a lot of distractions that just aren’t present in the average office. It is, after all, supposed to be the haven where people go to rest. So, if you must bring work home with you, it helps to establish a specific place at home where work is done. This will help to establish a pattern of productivity and help you to maintain your focus on the task at hand.

Over-communicate with your teammates. Communicating and collaborating with someone is a lot easier when they’re a few feet away, so you need to make sure you overcompensate so that everyone is sure to be on the same page. Is a project you’re working on ready to move on to the next step? Update your time tracking program with your progress, message them with updates, and make sure that the project is added to their schedule.

Have you put remote work to use? SCW can help you make the most of it with the critical IT support and solutions you and your team will need. Reach out to us at (509) 534-1530 to learn more.