With Coronavirus impacting businesses across all industries, it may be time to consider if your team can work from home. If this is an option for you, it is essential that you implement procedures and policies that keep your team accountably and ensure continuity of your business.
We would like to provide some practical tips on how you can manage this transition and remotely manage your team.
Do your team have everything they need to work from home?
As an employer you should ensure that your employees are supplied with all the necessary equipment required to effectively work from home. This may vary depending on the tasks required.
In most business you will also have to provide remote access or the ability to log into your cloud environment to enable your team to access your system. If you don’t have these systems in place, speak to your IT support about available options.
Find ways to utilise technology to stay connected as a team
The feeling of isolation and disconnection can be a very real issue when working from home. To counteract this, we recommend utilising technology so you can conduct virtual meeting and stay connected to your team.
At Walsh Accountants, we use Microsoft Teams. This allows all employees to virtually call their team members, FaceTime into our daily team meetings, and create group chats to discuss work with others.
We also use Microsoft Stream – our Directors are posting daily video communication to the whole team keeping us well informed as the coronavirus situation develops and what that means to the firm and the impact it may have on our clients.
Some examples of other platforms that may be an option to your team:
- Asana – plan, organise, and execute work tasks together as a team
- Skype/ Zoom – video calling platforms
- Join-me – screen sharing video conferencing platform
- Slack – instant messaging collaboration platform
Here are some useful links to fast-track your work-from home learning:
Best Practice for Virtual Meetings
Working from home due to Coronavirus
Set Clear Guidelines and Expectations
Communication is key with remote workers – Set clear guidelines of what is expected each day.
Have each team member communicate their daily plan to you and be sure that your strategic priorities are clearly communicated to everyone – e.g. what will be completed, to what quality, and by when.
For transparency and accountability, you may like to have each team member report to their manager/team leader their progress vs their daily plan. This will help you to see that each team member is being productive in their own environment and quickly highlight any gaps/need for further support and training.
Life always gives us opportunities to learn. Lean into your team and grow together as you learn how to effectively work from home. Your employees are your most valuable asset and will be instrumental in getting operation back on track when business resumes to normal.
As always, our team are here to help! If you have any questions or we can support you in anyway, please do not hesitate to contact your Accountant. We are committed to supporting all of our clients throughout the difficult times we are experiencing.
