If You Never Worked from Home Before, Here are 10 Suggestions

We are living in unprecedented times, in the midst of a global health crisis. It’s clear that one of
the obvious solutions will be that more and more employees across the planet will be asked to
work from home. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) has already been recommending that,
if you are sick, stay home.
In that vein, here are some suggestions for those that have never worked from home…

1. Find the right technology that works for you and your team to stay connected. There
are lots of options – Skype, Teams, Zoom, Facetime, Slack.
2. Use video whenever possible. It’s easy to turn it off, but video will help keep you all
connected.
3. Get a good headset, microphone, camera, internet connection - for everyone. Poor
technology can unfairly marginalize you in a conversation and stifle your voice.
4. Create a backchannel chat. There is the “on stage” of the meeting, but make sure you
have set up side channels to chat with people off stage, just as you would whisper or pass
a note in a real-time meeting. If a group is together and some are remote, make sure
everyone that is remote has a private backchannel to someone in the room to break into the
conversation.
5. Consider an always-on video or chat channel. In the workplace, a lot happens when
people bump into one another in the hallway – ad hoc conversations. Consider creating an
‘always on” video – or a chat channel to help create these ad hoc interactions.
6. Schedule more frequent get-togethers to account for lack of human interactions.
When people move to online, something like having lunch together will move from
stopping by a neighbor’s desk to something that doesn’t happen. Make time to add a
schedule invite to formally take lunchtime together.
 7. Include everyone – or leave a footprint. IRL (in real life) we tend to have a conversation
with 2-3 people – and then follow up. Online, we might take a shortcut and just ask one
person – and miss the perspective and benefit of including the second person. Be deliberate
about making sure everyone, including seemingly marginal players, are in the online
conversation – the same as they would be in the room in person – even if they are not
saying anything at the time.
8. Join the meeting five minutes ahead to make sure the tech is working.
9. Record the meetings. While this can obviously help those who couldn’t attend, it also
allows people to see how they show up. It’s important for managers to review. Did someone
have garbled audio making their viewpoint was not as valuable?
10. If the group is together, make sure someone is responsible to pay attention and give
the floor to those joining remotely. If you are the one person who is remote, find a friend
who is in the room.

We have unprecedented new challenges. If COVID-19 becomes more widespread, it may be likely
that more people will be working remotely and in isolation. Remote work has some benefits –
flexibility, commute traffic avoidance, etc – and health benefits in this case – but can offer
challenges as well. Building a competency around remote work will help every company as it
broadens the population for recruiting and grows the talent pool, and while there are challenges,
these can be overcome.