Clean Air Council


Tips For Productive Telework

A woman sits at a table by a window with a laptop.

 

As our city, state, and nation fight to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus, many of us are working remotely full-time for the first time. There are many challenges to working from home, but there are some tried and true ways to unlock your remote working potential.

 

  • Create a workspace – A dedicated area encourages your brain to associate this place with professional activities, facilitating better focus and higher productivity.
  • Keep A Schedule – Having established work hours helps keep remote workers on track. It also enables co-workers, supervisors, and family members to know when to expect you to be available. 
  • Set clear expectations – Setting goals and tracking progress is always essential in the workplace, and becomes even more so when working remotely. 
  • Communicate with your team – Communicate early and often. Since you aren’t able to pop over to your colleague’s desk to talk through an idea or ask a question, it’s important to maintain consistent communication. Communicating with your team often can also help with morale and mental health by creating a collaborative virtual environment.
  • Stay organized – Keeping an updated to do list, a neat space, and an accurate calendar can go a long way towards keeping you on task when working remotely. Time management strategies like the pomodoro technique are good ways to stay focused.
  • Move your body – Switching from in person work to remote work means less movement in your day. To keep yourself mentally sharp and physically healthy, it’s important to keep active. Daily walks and frequent stretch breaks are great ways to keep your blood (and your ideas) flowing.
  • Use technology to collaborate and stay connected – Emails and phone calls are a given, but there are many other tools to use to optimize your collaborative work-flow:  
    • Slack – Slack is a cloud-based collaboration tool that can be the central platform through which teams communicate. It’s easy to organize your work, share files, host video calls, chat, and more.
    • Google Drive – Google Drive is a free cloud-based storage service that enables users to store and access files online. The service syncs stored documents, photos, and more across all of the user’s devices, including mobile devices, tablets, and PCs.
    • Google Hangouts – A unified communication service that allows members to initiate and participate in text, voice or video chats, either one-on-one or in a group. Hangouts are built into and Gmail, and mobile Hangouts apps are available for iOS and Android devices.
    • GoToMeeting – An online meeting, desktop sharing, and video conferencing software package that enables the user to meet with other computer users, customers, clients, or colleagues via the internet in real time.
    • FreeConference.com – A website that provides free telephone conferencing. 
    • Zoom – an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems that allow for seamless conferences and easy screensharing. 

 

Once you’ve worked through the challenges of getting started with working remotely, you can focus on all the benefits. Telecommuting lowers your carbon footprint, and can add hours to your day by eliminating your commute. We here at Clean Air Council hope that these strategies for productive telework will help you in this trying time, and can become part of your regular routine once we return to normal life. 

If you are an HR person or manager that needs support getting your office set up with telework, reach out to kalloway@cleanair.org and we’d be happy to help.

 

Image Source: Getty Images

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