Working From Home?
Cool, we are too!
With 15 years of experience managing a remote team.
Here are some tips from our team to stay productive and keep the business moving while practicing safe social distancing.
COVID-19 is showing us how interconnected our world truly is and creating opportunities for your organization to embrace a “work from home” culture in new ways. As a digital marketing agency, we’ve had a hybrid of office and “work from home” hours since 2005. We have the process perfected and find these five things keep the work flowing with the best possible results while still feeding that human connection. Most knowledge workers in your organization can work from home with full productivity.
“Can you share your screen?”VIDEO CHAT & VIRTUAL MEETINGS
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how much more impactful is a video? We use Zoom for video conferences and to share our lovely faces and voices.
- Easily organize one-to-one meetings
- Conduct all-staff huddles
- Sharing your screen & document collaboration
- Presentations
- Real-time annotations
- Attendee controls
Zoom works on your phone, tablet, or computer, and you can dial in by phone if you’re not online. Zoom is free for the first 40 minutes and up to 100 users.
“Slack it to me”INTERNAL CHAT APP TO KEEP IT FLOWING
“Slack” is like Skype or your iPhone messages on steroids. It’s used by almost every large company in the world.
Slack is essentially a chat room for your whole company, designed to replace email as your primary method of communication and sharing.
- Unlimited channels and workspaces #randomfun #kudos #ops
- Private messages to share information, files, and more all in one place
- Mute notifications and “Do Not Disturb” settings
- “Ping” a project channel or private chat
We can’t say enough about Slack after leaving Skype years ago.
There’s a free version, and the one we use is $8/mo per user.
“How Long Did That Take?”HOURS ACCOUNTABILITY AND TIME TRACKING
As a small business owner with remote employees, being accountable for your time is a fundamental part of managing a team. By having clients, projects, and tasks defined in a time tracking tool such as Harvest, you can see how and when employees are spending their time.
- Track Spending
- Invoicing
- Mobile App
- Desktop App
- Goal Tracking
- Budget Caps & Alerts
It doesn’t matter if they’re working from home, the office, or a coffee shop since you’ll have visibility into the data, hour-by-hour, and deliverable-by-deliverable.
“Yo. Updated it in the Project Locker.”MANAGE RESULTS, NOT THE “CLOCK”
We use a project management tool called Basecamp to track deliverables.
No matter what role someone has in your organization, they have a list of projects with individual tasks to complete. Basecamp is a rad tool to organize, assign and collaborate on a project.
- Track To-Do’s
- Create Process & Check Lists
- Store Assets
- Manage timelines
- Assign Tasks
- Assign Deadlines
- Organize Your Plate
Basecamp has an unbeatable $99/mo flat fee for unlimited users.
“Done Yet?”
CONCLUSION
Many organizations have to have somewhat of a WFH (“Work From Home”) setup. While the news media is monopolizing our attention without adding new information, it’s time to plug forward and focus on action.
Volatility creates opportunity, and your organization has the chance to mature and thrive as employees carry on operations from home.
For more information about website changes and strategy recommendations for digital marketing during this time, check out “Essential COVID-19 Web & Email Notifications”!
