How to Make Remote Working Work for You — Tips and Tricks

Remote Working has been the buzz word in 2020. And why not, with the pandemic triggering the lockdown globally, almost all of us resorted to working from home. What started as a coping mechanism, soon turned into a welcome practice! Today, companies are rethinking their operations and evaluating if remote working is sustainable in the long term.

At PromptCloud, we were quick to accept and introduce this change. Being a technology-driven company has its merits after all. Three months into being a completely remote working organization, and I have more clarity on the pros and cons of this decision.

What is great about remote working you ask? The obvious reasons — saves travel time and cost associated with it, lesser distractions to work, ability to work from anywhere. The not so obvious ones — boosts productivity, better work hours planning, ability to hire globally, attract better and larger talent pool, increased employee satisfaction and loyalty.

While the merits run high, one cannot look away from the probable downside as well. The good news is, we are all evolving in this together and learning better ways to manage it.

Fix 1: Distractions

Constant messages in your office chat window, extended calls, last-minute meeting requests; you must have got the drift. It is easy to get distracted in a remote work set- up, especially if your role demands cross-functional collaboration and team management. After all, the illusion of all-time availability is demanding.

Tips and Tricks

• Unplanned vs Critical Tasks: Differentiate between unplanned and critical tasks. While critical tasks need to be dealt with efficiently, unplanned tasks can end up eating more of your time. Assign a particular time to deal with all the unplanned tasks — daily, weekly, whatever frequency works for you.
• Asynchronous Communication: In this to-and-fro communication world, we often get into the habit of replying immediately. Unless critical, your response can wait.

Fix 2: Burn Out

This is probably the most acknowledged and discussed aspect of remote working. Burn out is real. According to FlexJobs and Mental Health America Survey, 75% of people have felt burned out at work, and 40% have felt so during the pandemic in particular.

Tips and Tricks

• Reserve time for all your daily tasks, reviews, and approvals: I used to struggle with multiple reviews and approvals that keep popping in my email box throughout the day. Setting aside an hour for all these tasks has helped me clean this.
• Set Processes: Try to define and document processes for all the regular activities, it helps everyone involved align in terms of timeline, responsibility, and the result. It removes the confusion and saves you time.
• Set Timers: Take breaks, try to carve time out every alternate hour, walk around. Review42 survey states that 37% of remote workers believe the best way to boost productivity is to take regular breaks.

Fix 3: Team Connect

Remote workers can feel lonely and disconnected. In fact, the Igloo survey suggests that 70% of remote workers report feeling “left out” of the workplace and company culture. It requires special measures to combat this and establish an employee connection.

Tips and Tricks

• Hire responsibly: In remote working, you not only hire for skills but also the right aptitude. Build a team that is responsible and mature to adjust to flexibility.
• Set the expectations right: Establishing the right expectations and goals is the key to work efficiency. Your team members can deliver the best result if they are well aware of the final expectations.
• Give and receive feedback: Keep your feedback channel open. It is a two-way street. Timely and quality feedback is essential for performance improvement.
• Inspire Collaboration: One can easily slip into a silo if there is not enough communication. Keep your team informed at all times — progress, slips, projects, anything, and everything.

I believe that am able to manage and contribute more towards my work with the above tips and tricks in the last few months. I am sure that each one of us has developed our own system by now, to make it work the best for us. I also realized why remote working may not be for everyone! Generating the same level of commitment across the levels in your team could be tricky. Thankfully for us, this has been an opportunity in disguise.

— Prateeksha Rawat, Director of Marketing, PromptCloud