Almost all teams worldwide are now working from home. However, while there are many perks like more time with the family and less time wasted commuting, many leaders and companies are scrambling to adapt to managing this new situation.
In this episode of the Selling in Asia Podcast, Tom Abbott discusses how to keep staff productive while working from home, tools you can use for the remote work, and how to keep the social connection when no one is working together under the same roof anymore.
Also read:
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Preparation
When physically preparing to transition into work from home, it’s vital to remember to start cultivating mental preparation and a motivational mindset to help you succeed. As a leader, it’s crucial that you first reassure your team, perhaps give them a pep talk but be realistic about the situation at hand and most importantly – be honest.
The next aspect to consider is how appropriate your home workspace actually is! Are you distraction-free? Have you got a clean space to work in? Do your family understand that when you’re working – you’re working!? While it’s okay to relax into some of the perks of working from home like sleeping in or more quality time, you’ve got to ensure you stick to a regular business day routine and set boundaries with your household to ensure you can stay laser-focused on the task at hand.
Communication
In the office, you were able to quickly have face-to-face meetings, read your team’s body language, and see what they’re doing but not anymore. Now, you need to make an effort. It’s fair to say that communication is the biggest challenge for most working from home, but in fact, it’s almost impossible to over-communicate! If you’re a leader, check in with your team constantly, every couple of hours. Check-in with them to see how they’re doing and what they’re working on. When staff work from home, you can’t wait until the end of the day to find out they were doing the wrong thing.
A good practice is to ask your team what they’ll be working on at the beginning of the day and what they accomplished at the end. It’s as simple as that and keeps everyone informed and accountable for the expected work each day. You can even ask the staff to repeat back what they understand their task to check and always encourage your team to send partially completed work to you to check they’re on the right track.
It’s going to be tempting to quickly send off messages because it can seem like a hassle to do phone calls or video calls but you need to do them. Otherwise, you’re going to find that miscommunication happens, leading to more and more mistakes. So do video calls whenever you can and better yet schedule daily calls to make it easier for people to ask questions they might not otherwise ask.
Vital Tools For Remote-Working
Video Communication Tools
Video chat is the closest you can get to an in-person experience; understanding your team through their gestures, tone, and facial expressions are vital to practical, concise and clear conversations.
Online Office Suites
It’s no secret that office suites are no longer software and are instead apps online with multiple connection capabilities. For example, Microsoft Office Online and Googles equivalent, G Suite (Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc.), allows you to share a file with others effortlessly. Better yet? They can add comments or make edits all in real-time.
Password Managers
Frankly, hackers are becoming more advanced than ever before and besides, why risk your sensitive information anyway? We all have way too many passwords to remember, and changing your password is usually, at best, an inconvenience. So choosing a password manager to negate these issues is excellent, but some even have a function that enables you to share passwords with other people securely.
More About SOCO Sales Training
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Have SOCO train your team in the top sales skills needed to take on 2021 through either Virtual Instructor Led Training through video conferencing software or let your team learn new skills in their spare time using our popular e-learning platform – SOCO Academy.
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