Resources For Working From Home
Working from home (WFH) has been my near-exclusive way of working for the last 5 years and a normal occurrence in the 6 years before that, so the prospect of working exclusively from home for the next few weeks isn’t as impacting to me as it would be for others. Yes, it definitely does take shifting your brain a little bit to make sure you can stay focused on work while at home and also shut down work at the end of the day to still enjoy your home. Since for many, it won’t be a long term situation, getting past the psychological piece is probably best overcome by reminding yourself it’s a temporary situation and by making these changes you are helping everyone in your community. The other side to working from home is ensuring you have the structure in place to make it even possible.
I wanted to share some practical advice on how to make working from home successful for you and your employees. The more people that are able to work from home, the better the effect of social distancing and the more we can flatten the curve to keep our vulnerable populations safer longer and so they have better access to healthcare should they need it. Of course, working from home is not an option for everyone given their job functions and that’s why those of us who are fortunate enough to have roles where we can work from home, really should, because others do not have the option.
Hardware Setup
Your hardware is the physical pieces you touch. Like the desktop computer you push the power on, the monitor you view your computer information on or the mouse you use. If you are not accustomed to working at home, the best advice for your hardware setup is to get it as close to what you use at the office as you can. If that means you use an external monitor to give yourself more real estate, track down an external monitor to use at home (ask friends if they have one you can borrow, or take one home from the office if permitted). If you use an external mouse instead of a laptop trackpad, use an external mouse at home. These may seem like small things that you are thinking, “Oh I can do without them for a short time” but they are small things you can do to make the transition to working at home easier.
Internal Communication
This is one of the biggest hiccups that comes up sometimes when you transition to a work from home structure. In an office, you can yell across the room or walk over to someone’s desk to communicate quick one-off questions or a heads up. There’s also a social element that this interaction adds. Here are a few options to consider in a WFH structure.
Phone Calls
Quick calls are great for questions or discussions that are more complex or will take more than a one word answer. They also serve to help keep people connected and engaged in their work, but just be careful you don’t find yourself calling each other constantly to fill the void of the social element of the office as that can cut into your ability to get your work completed.
Screen Sharing
In some work tasks like sharing a document with someone, walking through a presentation or even just trying to tell someone what buttons to click, just a phone call doesn’t solve the issue. That’s where screen sharing software can come in. These are softwares that are designed to allow you to share your screen with one or many people. They can be lifesavers for making sure long email threads don’t happen or you don’t end up in a text fight from a misunderstanding. Many of these companies have free options or are offering special access due to the current situation.
Gotomeeting – https://www.gotomeeting.com/en-ca
Zoom – https://zoom.us/
Google Hangouts – https://gsuite.google.com/products/meet/
Microsoft Teams – https://products.office.com/en-ca/microsoft-teams/
Text Messages
These are useful if you feel comfortable exchanging texts with your work colleagues and if it’s conversations that are quick to type on a mobile device. You may find that written exchanges are harder to use on your mobile device if it’s a constant back and forth. This is also a little trickery if you need to have a conversation with multiple people at once who might be using different kinds of phones (i.e. iPhone vs Android).
Messaging Applications
These are platforms that allow you to have back and forth communications with one or many people at once. There are a few different options out there, including some you probably use already in your personal life like Facebook Messenger. Some options are free and some are paid, but the one thing to look for is an option that has the features you need like also having a mobile applications to allow greater accessibility.
Facebook Messenger (This means using personal accounts) – https://www.messenger.com/
Facebook For Work – https://www.facebook.com/workplace/
Microsoft Teams – https://products.office.com/en-ca/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software/
Slack – https://slack.com/
Skype – https://www.skype.com/en/
Sharing Documents
This one is a big roadblock for people who are working in excel files or other documents all day. The option most people in an office will use, that is still an option for WFH, is to email along updates to the files. The roadblock you’ll hit more in a WFH structure is multiple versions of the same file floating around and you miss that face to face communication of being able to tell someone by yelling across the room that you’ve got an update.
If you still want to use email for sharing documents, a helpful tip is to add either version numbers (v1, v2, etc.) to the end of files or adding the date (asofMarch15). Small changes to file names like that mean you can reference them in your emails and keep everyone on the same page.
File Sharing Service (Dropbox/Google Drive/One Drive)
Another way to share documents is using an online file sharing platform. These allow you to upload documents to one place so that you can either share a direct link to the file or so that you can add certain user emails to access all files.
Google Drive – https://www.google.com/drive/
Dropbox – https://www.dropbox.com/
Microsoft One Drive – https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-ca/business/
Online Document Storage and Editing (Google Drive/Office 365)
Taking the sharing of documents one step further, some online document sharing sites allow for you to create, edit and manage access directly on their platforms. That means the word document you are writing in or the spreadsheet you are working on updates in real time so that everyone can see the changes as they happen. You can also choose whether others can edit the document or not.
Google Drive – https://www.google.com/drive/
Microsoft One Drive – https://onedrive.live.com/about/en-ca/business/
Accessing Documents/Programs
So maybe you are all set for working on documents at home, but the issue you are running in to is that you need to access documents that are on your work computer or that the programs you need to use are installed on your work computer. That’s where a remote connection will come into play. Remote connections allow you to access what’s on your work computer through the internet so you can operate it from another location, like your home computer.
VPN
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a way to get two systems to talk to each other so you can access documents and programs on one from the other in a secured manner. If you aren’t as comfortable with technology, you may want to ask for some help on this one.
Google Chrome Remote Desktop
Another option for remote access is to use an application like Google Chrome Remote Desktop. Using your google account, it allows you to connect to a desktop from another computer or even your mobile device. The setup is fairly straight forward and easy to use.
https://remotedesktop.google.com/
External Communication/Sales
Communicating with your customers might be one of the top concerns preventing you from taking the step of working from home for yourself or your employees. While some occupations will not be able to limit interactions with customers (i.e. brick & mortar retail locations making purchases), I have seen a lot of businesses posting about stepping up their cleaning processes and also offering alternatives for customers to interact with them so there’s always options that can be considered.
Payments
This can be a tricky one for brick & mortar businesses, but if you want to move away from accepting cash or in-person payments some digital options to consider:
E-transfers – https://www.interac.ca/
Paypal – http://paypal.ca/
Stripe – https://stripe.com/
Square – https://squareup.com/ca/en
Quickbooks – https://quickbooks.intuit.com/
Phone Lines
If you have a physical phone line at your office, the easiest way to make sure this number is still available for your customers to call is to forward the number to your home or mobile device. Some people may find this tricky to do if they need to transfer calls to different people in their office in the run of a day or if they don’t want to receive business calls on personal lines after business hours.
Voicemail
Update your voicemail to let your clients know you will return their call within the hour then work out a schedule to have 1 staff member call in to check the voicemail on the hour every day and email or message the voicemail messages out to team members for follow-up. By using one central location and creating a schedule, you know that nothing will get missed. Check with your telephone service provider as well since many providers offer an online method to check your voicemail which can make this a little easier to do as well.
3rd Party Apps
If you are looking for a solution that doesn’t involve checking voicemail, but you need to be able to route calls to different people, check out some of the 3rd Party Apps that are available for call management. You could choose to either port in your current number (warning this would take the number off of your current physical phone line) or you could purchase another phone number that you forward your current number to. Many of these apps have auto-attendant options where callers can press a certain number to be forward to a certain individual. The bonus is all the setup is done so the customer wouldn’t have to dial a different number than normal.
Line2 – https://www.line2.com/
Dialpad – https://www.dialpad.com/
MightyCall – https://www.mightycall.com/
Emails
These days most email services offer a web-based component, meaning you can still access your inbox even if you are not on the computer you typically use for work. If you normally use a downloaded software (like Outlook) to access your work email, check with your email provider to get the proper links to their online login location and for any help you might need to confirming your username or resetting your password.
If you use a shared inbox and don’t typically share email passwords with your staff for privacy or security reasons, you can reset the password after we get over this time frame and everyone is back in the office.
Passwords
Speaking of passwords, if there are other sites that you don’t share passwords for but your employees will need when working from home, you can always spend a little money on a product like LastPass, which allows you to share passwords with people without them ever being able to see the passwords.
Hopefully, this resource gives you some ideas on how to make working from home more feasible for you or your employees and I’ll continue to update any more solutions as I think of them. If you have a question or challenge you are trying to overcome to make WFH possible, feel free to reach out via social media channels or email. Stay safe everyone and WASH YOUR HANDS!
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