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The Ultimate Guide to Work from Home: Part 1

By April 7, 2020No Comments6 min read
Work from home project management

The coronavirus outbreak has changed everyone’s life. Most enterprises are advising their workers to work from their homes. This will help governments in limiting the spread of this virus. Also, companies can protect their workers from this virus. Remote work is the best way to protect your workforce from this virus. However, there are various challenges that come with remote work. You need to develop a communication strategy for your remote employees. In this article, we are going to give some tips that will help you with working from home.

  • Remote Collaboration

This is the first challenge that every remote team will face. If your team members are working in the same office, then you can easily communicate with them. However, it can be very difficult to collaborate if your team members are in another location.

There are many benefits of working remotely. However, you can’t substitute virtual interactions with personal meetings. It is important to connect with your remote employees. You should do face-to-face meetings with your employees.

There are many amazing tools that will help you in solving this problem. However, there are some limitations to this solution. The good thing is that there are hundreds of collaboration tools available in the market. Thus, you can find the best tool for your team. Some of the best tools available for collaboration are:

  1. Slack: Slack is the most famous collaboration tool. Your team can use it for chatting with each other. This tool is perfect for teams that need to communicate regularly.
  2. Every Time Zone: If your remote workers are working from different geographical locations, then the time zone will be a big problem for you. You need to do some math before sending your messages. This tool will help you in eliminating this math. You can directly check the time zone of your team members. Also, you can check if your team members are awake. If they are awake, then you can talk with them. Thus, it is perfect for team members that are working from different geographical locations.
  3. Google Drive: It is important to store your files in a centralized location. You can use Google Drive for storing your documents, slide presentations and spreadsheets. Thus, your team members can easily access these documents.
  4. Zoom meetings: Zoom will help you in holding virtual meetings. It will also allow people to chat with each other. Thus, you can send a message to your other team members. If someone has a doubt, then they can send a message to the team. Thus, you don’t need to interrupt your team members when they are talking.
  • Project Management

If your team members are working from different locations, then it can be difficult to track their progress. It is the manager’s responsibility to ensure that their teams are meeting the deadlines. If your project is important, then you should regularly monitor the progress of that project. Thus, you need tools for managing and monitoring your projects.

First, you should regularly communicate with your remote workers. Also, your whole meeting should be summarized in some documents. You should send this document to every team member. Also, you should send a recap of your meeting to your team members. This will ensure that your remote workers know everything about the project. Your employees can’t ask you about small doubts if they are working from home. Thus, these things will help them in clarifying their doubts. Also, this will ensure that the communication line is open for everyone. You can use these tools for managing your projects:

  1. Asana: Asana is a perfect tool for virtual workers. It combines the elements of collaboration, file storage, and project management. Your team can use it for managing their projects easily.
  2. JIRA: This is a cross-platform bug tracking tool. It can also help you in managing your projects. Thus, remote workers should use this tool.
  3. ProofHub: Your team can use this tool for seamlessly interacting with each other. You can also use it for communicating with your clients. This is an all-in-one project management tool. It supports project management, chat, discussions and online proofing. Thus, you can use this tool for managing your remote projects.
  4. BaseCamp: This is a very famous team collaboration and project management tool. You can also use it for communicating with your team members and clients. This tool offers various amazing features to its users. You can use it for sharing ideas and organizing conversations. This will ensure that your team members can share their ideas.
  • Create a Schedule

If you are working from home, then you are your own buss. Thus, it is your responsibility to complete your work. You should create a work schedule. It is important to ensure that you are completing your work on time. If you feel lazy in the morning, then you should complete your routine tasks in the morning. Thus, you can focus on more important work in the evening. You can also use the Pomodoro technique for increasing your productivity. In this technique, you need to work for 25 minutes first. After that, you can take a small break of 5 minutes. This will ensure that you can stay focused. If you like working at night, then you can complete your work at night. The schedule is the best way to ensure that you are completing your work. Your company trusts your work ethics. Thus, you should ensure that you are completing their important work on time.

Conclusion

Remote work is a new concept for many workers. However, coronavirus has forced everyone to embrace remote work. If you are working from home, then you should have the right tools. It is important to ensure that your team members are collaborating with each other. There are various tools available in the market that will help your remote team members. We have already talked about some of the best remote collaboration tools available in the market. Also, you should use project management tools for managing your projects. There are various amazing project management tools available in the market. We are going to share some more tips in the next article. If you need more tips regarding remote work, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.