Expert Hacks and Tips for Working at Home

To retain focus, treat your home office like a traditional workplace. That said, don’t forget to set boundaries, enjoy newfound time in the workday, or create an atmosphere that motivates your particular work patterns.

Below are experts’ top tips for remaining productive while working from home:

• Treat work from home like you’d treat work in your employer’s office.
  
  
  • Set a schedule.The concept of “core hours” can benefit both employees and employers, says Kate Lister, president ofGlobal Workplace Analytics. Core hours are hours when you are reliably available to your employer and assumed to be working. If you know when you are (and aren’t) on duty, you have the power to schedule both your work time (and train nonwork contacts to lay off during those hours) and your social or personal time (and train the office when you’re unavailable except for emergencies).
  • Plan social activities and get out of the house occasionally.Whether you use “walking meetings” during work hours, take a sunrise coffee walk, or attend a weekly happy hour, it’s important to set social routines that enable you to untether from the home office.
  • Include watercooler time with teammates.People who work from home are prone to feelings of isolation. Checking in with colleagues when you’re off deadline or wrapping the workday can help prevent this workplace hazard.
  • Avoid lingering in the kitchen.When working from home, it’s easy to fall into lengthy midday meal prep or cooking sessions. A rule of thumb: Spend no more time in your home kitchen than you’d spend in an office kitchen — scramble an egg, make a sandwich, or microwave a bowl of soup, but otherwise prepare meals (or last night’s leftovers) and snacks in advance. Over the weekend, prep lunches or lunch ingredients for the week.
  • Keep it ambient.This is one way working from home might differ from working in a traditional office. If soft music helps you focus or find a productivity groove, tune in, turn on, and crank out work.
  • “Close the door” and “log off” to end the day.Make sure you have work-free spaces in your home — hours when you’re off-limits or places in the residence you don’t work. If you have an office, shut the door to it at the end of the day. It’s hard to associate every space onsite with productivity, and you don’t want the entire place to feel like an office. Use alerts on work accounts or watercooler apps such as Slack to indicate whether you’re “on” or “snoozed,” and set times for yourself when you don’t use your computer or other devices to work. Notify teammates and families of these times, and enforce them when people (inevitably) forget.
• Create a space to work.
  • Invest in the right home office equipment.If you’re a freelancer, home office equipment and even home office square footage are typically tax deductible (reviewIRS rulesand discuss this with an accountant before splurging on an assumed deduction). Invest in a computer setup (computer, keyboard, monitor, and peripherals like a mouse, speakers, a microphone, and glare screens), as well as a proper desk, chair, printer (and scanner and fax machine, if applicable), and task lighting. As you work from home consistently, you may find you need to replace your existing gear for ergonomic reasons — perhaps invest in a standing desk to reduce sedentary work or a balance ball that makes for “active sitting” to replace a desk chair.
  • Upgrade your home access.A Virtual Private Network (VPN) provides a direct connection to your workplace, which enhances communications security, and may require coordination with your company’s IT department. If you’re transitioning from a workplace to a home office, you may also need to boost your Wi-Fi speed to ensure you can surf at the highest speed available. While your internet provider may offer you one speed, the true speed in your home could be slower due to the placement of your router or neighborhood web traffic. Use a Wi-Fi speed app (Google offers tools, as does Netspot, Wifiner, and Speed Test) to measure your connection speed, and talk to your provider about upgrade options.
  • 投资于消音耳机静音button.These are among Fleishman’s favorite work-from-home tools and can cost as little as $40 per set.
  • Install temperature control devices.If your go-to work spot is chilly or less insulated than the rest of the home, you may want to invest in a space heater, fan, or dehumidifier. No one works well when shivering, sweltering, or breathing overly dry air.
  • Choose your private office room — or private office nook.It’s important to separate work from personal life when working from home, so you’ll need to create a designated work space (as well as some work-free zones). Ideally, your home office has a door you can close, natural light (which can lighten moods and boost work motivation), and good air circulation. This office is where you work — and only work. Don’t take work outside of this room into the “personal” parts of the house, and don’t introduce nonwork activities to this room unless on a rare occasion (such as doing a nonwork hobby on a nonwork day). Some personal effects and plants and art are fine, as with a workplace office. Make this space attractive — a place you enjoy going — but don’t overdo the distractions.If you don’t have a dedicated room, this is where a combination of dedicated time and space come in handy, says Fleishman.
    
    If you don’t have a private room, you can choose a room where you’ll work and set working hours. Perhaps the corner desk in the den or bedroom is your work-only zone from noon to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
    
    Use rituals and routine to signal to yourself and family that it’s work time: closing the door to the room you use part-time, donning headphones, opening or closing blinds/curtains, or using a Shoji-type folding screen to make a temporary partition around your workspace. White noise apps such as Noisli (a Pandora for white noise) can enhance concentration when your work space isn’t yours 24/7.
• Reclaim your commute time.
  • Commute to your home office.Many folks who work from home practice rituals to mark the shift from personal time to work time and vice versa. Whether it’s walking to the office, making the bed, or shutting the bedroom door, be sure to separate your personal day from the workday. “I know a guy who drives around the block, comes home, parks, and then enters the house as if ‘returning home’ from work,” says Lister. If you have an office with a door, shut it when the workday’s done — and never bring work into other zones of your home.
  • Count your newfound hours.If you used to leave the house at 7:15, worked from 8-4:30, then commuted home from 4:30-5:15, congrats: You’ve gained 1.5 hours per weekday. Use this newfound time intentionally, whether that means starting the day with a review of the media you used to scroll through on the bus, tackling a short workout or yoga session, or preparing food for work hours. The end of the day might be a good time for “watercooler” chat — emailing or texting with professional contacts, hitting happy hour, or making exploratory contacts with prospective clients or collaborators.
  • Rethink your schedule.If you’re at your peak first thing in the morning, hit the desk early and take a long lunch or other break — walk the dog, work out, or tune into your favorite show. While some teleworkers and productivity professionals give mixed reviews to watching TV, scheduling a show as a reward allows you to enjoy it for a finite time frame and might be the perfect break that motivates you.
• Set boundaries.
  • Communicate your work hours to your communities.Tell children, overnight visitors, and relatives that you work during set hours and inform them of those hours. If you work from home with children, you can find additional approaches to juggling a workload while parenting by reading“Homework: Tips for Working from Home with Kids.”
  • Don’t take or make personal calls during core hours.Presumably, significant others know your day’s rhythms and can wait on responses to texts or emails, so don’t take personal calls unless you plan them during scheduled break time. This advice also applies to friends and relatives in different time zones who may get in touch when they’re off work and you’re not.
  • Don’t communicate outside normal work hours.Harvard Business Reviewnotes that part of the problem with work-from-home boundaries is this behavior — an employee uses messaging after hours, another employee responds after hours, and then they’ve both fallen into measurable after-hours work. If you send email after work, use the app’s scheduling feature so your note is delivered during work hours and the conversational thread picks up then. (Of course, this doesn’t apply if you and your employer have come to a separate agreement.)
  • Take a stand on friends stopping by during the day, and suggest alternative ways or times to get in touch.Let friends know how much you appreciate their wanting to see you, but that you’ll be available to them later. If you find it hard to say, “I’m in the middle of my workday, but I could schedule a walk or talk later,” put it on a Post-it note by the phone or front door.
  • Don’t come to work sick, and take proper sick days.Folks who work from home are hesitant to take sick days, but just because you’re at home already doesn’t mean you should power through those days. If you’re too sick for a simple walk or to complete typical work tasks, you’re too sick to work effectively from home. Shut the office door and climb in bed.
• Don’t forget the big picture.
  • Create a vision board.Whether you’re self-employed or working remotely for an employer, set professional goals for yourself so you don’t vanish into your home office. If you want to pursue training opportunities through an employer or on your own, network or engage with trade organizations to get ahead, or review your résumé with headhunters or peers to flag your skills gaps or possible opportunities, stay proactive and set your own goals.
  • Be positive.Maintain your friendships, tend to self-care (whether that’s basics like regular doctor visits and exercise, or treats like a spa day or sports game), and develop your relationships in the office, too.

Folks who work from home can struggle with too many distractions, too little connection to the home office, and lots of confusion about schedules and routines. The right tech tools and scheduling approaches can smooth road bumps to professional productivity. Check out “How to Focus While Working from Home” for tools and approaches to maintaining focus while working from home.

Whether or not your employer has begun rolling out work-sharing apps and video technologies for team-wide use, it’s worth your time learning to use Google Hangouts, Skype, and Zoom for video chat and calls, and Slack, WhatsApp, and Webex for quick communications during the day or quick meetings. If your home computer’s or phone’s video or audio capabilities aren’t up to par, consider investing in peripheral microphone or mini-video camera technologies.

“We’re hearing from large employers working to get managers trained on technologies like Zoom and Google Hangouts and on enterprise-level versions of them — they’ve always had these technologies; they just haven’t used them so extensively,” says Lister.

As telework becomes the norm, management is coming on board to the utility of videoconferencing instead of simple phone calls. Skype and Google Hangouts are popular for quick pickup video chats, while other videoconferencing apps, such as Zoom, allow you to join multiparticipant meetings from your computer or phone and screen-share with other attendees. You can findreviews of videoconferencing optionsfrom PC Magazine.

而视频会议面对面不一样communication — slight delays in sound and video quality may mean intuitive responses or even polite interruptions are somewhat sidelined — they are among the more popular options that telecommuters can use to replicate in-person contact.

Be sure to troubleshoot the videoconference tools before using them with your colleagues. Be mindful of personal items in the background (Zoom has animated background presets you can use), and always note whether your microphone is muted or camera turned off before you engage in any personal business during the meeting.

And while videoconferencing may be the closest approximation of in-person meetings, don’t discount the importance of face-to-face time. In fact, according to data from MIT’s Human Dynamic Labcited in the Washington Post, the more in-person communication a team engages in, the better its performance — with up to 35 percent variance between teams that met in person most often and those that didn’t. Consider folding in in-person meetings over time, as appropriate.

Allowing employees to work from home can boost productivity, save employers money on office space, reduce turnover (since employees appreciate flexibility), and allow companies to lean on their distributed workforces for business continuity during a crisis or disruption.

Working from home also helps employees save time, especially for commuting: According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average American commute in 2018 was 27 minutes each way. That’s 270 minutes, or 4.5 hours, freed up each week, which allows employees to adjust work hours to meet their needs. This, in turn, boosts morale and allows workers to work the way that suits their personality.

In addition to increased focus, telecommuters and freelancers who work from home are 57 percent more likely to experience job satisfaction, according to a survey by Amerisleep, and 80 percent report less stress. Remote employees may also earn up to $4,000 more per year than their office-based counterparts, according toFlexjobs research.

Owl Labs researchindicates that working from home is no longer a perceived or actual barrier to advancement: telecommuters are 2.2 times as likely to earn over $100,000 per year as office-bound workers, and nearly half of C-level executives work from home at least sometimes. In addition, according to Flexjobs, environmentalists can take pride in the fact that remote work can help reduce the number of cars on the road.

New research from Willis Towers Watsonindicates that among 681 major employers surveyed in May 2020, 53 percent of their collective workforces are currently working remotely. Though that percentage is expected to drop to 22 percent after social distancing and congregating restrictions ease, the remote worker contingent will remain considerably higher than the pre-pandemic level of 7 percent.

Zillow, the Seattle-based real estate listings and services company, significantly reconsidered telecommuting during the pandemic. CEO Rich Barton tweeted: “My personal opinions about WFH have been turned upside down over the past 2 months. I expect this will have a lasting influence on the future of work ... and home. Stay safe.”

员工可以在家工作到年底2020, Bartonproclaimed in a GeekWire article. Soon after, Twitter announced it would not only permit employees to work from home through the end of 2020, but allow them to do so in perpetuity. Canadian online retailer Shopify followed suit. Facebook told the New York Times that within a decade, about half of its 45,000 employees are expected to work from home. These household names may now join the growing “best workplaces to telecommute” lists proliferating among mainstream media such as CNBC and remote work resources sites such as Flexjobs.

Employers considering preserving or extending telework can benefit from knowing the following:

• Remote employees need company face-to-face time, but not too often.Videoconferencing can put a face to a name on distributed teams, but periodic in-person meetings, meals, and bonding still help build trust and communication among colleagues. But live meetups don’t have to happen very often.
• Managers need nudging to accept the significance of work from home.It’s no secret that employees show more enthusiasm about working from home than their managers do.Pew Research data on working from homeindicate as much, and Global Workplace Analytics’ Lister says that one positive side effect of a disruption-induced shift to WFH may be a long-awaited improvement in reluctant managers’ mindsets, which have presented a hurdle to the proliferation of working from home.
  
  Instead of “babysitting teams” in the office, managing a distributed team makes the most sense when managers shift their mindset to a “results-oriented work environment” (ROWE) approach — what matters is that work projects are completed on time, not that an employee was parked in their cubicle during set hours. Managing in a results-oriented work environment requires trust and communication, Lister notes, and managers need to recognize employees’ deliveries (regardless of how little or much time they took) versus their presence in an “on retainer” manner. In a non-ROWE work environment,research on the workday from Vouchercloudindicates that a typical office employee is only truly productive three hours per day — the rest of their time is spent “being present,” passively attending meetings and so on. CultureRx’s Results-Only Work Environment library may give senior leaders or managers ideas on how to shift to a results-based environment.
• Managers need training on remote tools and remote management issues.While unplanned events and crises occasionally turn many nonremote workplaces into all-telework offices, seemingly overnight, that doesn’t mean all companies or managers are ready for remote management. Proactive companies can develop aremote-work playbookthat outlines policies, or at least offer managerial tools and approaches for the situation. To learn more about building a strong remote company culture, readthis article.As the reality of the new need for telework evolved, Zillow’s Learning & Development team assembled training content and webinars for leaders about how to communicate with employees during a period of fear and uncertainty, as well as what does and doesn’t work in a remote management setting, according to Emily Heffter, Zillow’s Director of Corporate Communications. On her own team, Heffter said the group initially began their new remote lifestyle with a daily video meeting to check in and say good morning — a replication of the morning huddle that happened organically in the office.
  
  We swiftly got ‘meeting fatigue,’” Heffter says. “The meetings started to feel unnecessary.” Heffter says that as the weeks of working from home accrued, she’s learned that, for one-on-one meetings, it’s a courtesy to ask the other party what sort of meeting they want to have (a phone call, a video chat, a walking meeting, etc.).
• Outfitting employees may require some investment.Leading an effective, distributed work team may require investments on the part of corporate for employees to flesh out their home workspaces. Not all adults with full-time office jobs have an appropriate home office space, and they may need furnishings or accessories to work effectively.
  
  Zillow, like many companies supporting telework, has offered to subsidize home office expenses for employees to augment their workspace, Heffter says. “Once it became clear ... that the stay-home orders would last, employees became eligible to put in for up to $200 in supplies — usually the requests are for monitors or desk chairs.”
  
  Companies fully converting to or hiring for permanently remote positions may offer allowances ranging from $500 to $1,000 for home offices, Lister notes.
• Employees still need to feel connected to their work and each other.Despite the many advantages of working from home, it also brings unique psychological challenges — namely, feeling disconnected. Anoriginal study conducted by Smartsheetin April 2020 found that 60 percent of employees feel less informed when working full-time remotely, and 75 percent of employees feel less connected. This issue is particularly prevalent among younger employees, as 82 percent of Generation Z and 81 percent of millennials report feeling less connected. With this in mind, employers should take extra steps to ensure employees are well-informed, up to date, and interacting with each other — through video, chat, and email, but also in-person meetings, as appropriate and safe.

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change.

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed.

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.Try Smartsheet for free, today.