“The ‘future’ we anticipated has been thrown into the present day as the world continues to navigate its way around the COVID-19 new ‘norm’,” says Calvin Collett, Managing Director for Supersonic. “We are being forced to up our game by building infrastructure quicker, expanding and upgrading network capacity sooner than planned and look further than just internet connectivity and come up with solutions that focus on meeting the need of future internet and connectivity usage behaviours.”

Calvin believes that 2021 will indirectly ‘formalise’ a hybrid model between physical office and WFH (work from home) scenarios. He says that businesses will subsidise the setup of effective WFH environments, robust back-up solutions will be in demand and IoT (Internet of Things), AI (artificial intelligence) technologies will assist with automated scheduling and interactive video conferencing.

“What will be interesting to see is how businesses learn to manage this hybrid model from a productivity perspective.” There is no shortage of digital tools companies can use to manage their teams’ output, but Calvin anticipates that we’ll start to see expert services and training facilities cropping up to analyse and interpret the data to be able to optimise workflow and reporting efficiencies. “Exception reporting will lead the charge in optimising productivity analysis.”

“We have seen a significant increase in the level of productivity across our team since March despite global sentiments about how individuals were going to manage to continue to work amidst their domestic circumstances,” says Calvin. “What we have identified, however is the skillset shift that is separating and underscoring the self-starters within our business. Meetings have become succinct and turnaround times have reduced.” Calvin highlights that an area that is still in limbo which no business has gotten quite right yet is the work/life balance. He says this will be an important part of the WFH evolution as the traditional 8-5 mindset will be pushed out of its comfort zone. 

If you’re in a position to work remotely, you’ll know by now that it comes with its fair share of pros and cons. On the one hand, there’s no traffic to deal with (yay!) and you can get away with wearing pyjamas on the bottom (double yay!), but on the other hand, you might be missing some of the creature comforts of a professional office environment, or maybe you’re struggling without your usual workday routine.

With that said, here’s mostly what everyone needs in order to make the most of remote working. Great tips from our friends at LG:

A comfortable chair

Anyone who’s been sitting on their dining room chair for 8 hours a day for six months has learned a valuable lesson: dining room chairs should not be sat on for 8 hours a day for six months! Just do it, order a better chair. There are so many options available online; there’s no excuse not to. Many companies are even allowing employees to take their office chairs home, so why not ask yours if that’s an option?

Headphones with a microphone

For many of us who have to share a remote working space with our families (including partners and children all leading their own online lives), we know how chaotic it can get with everyone trying to hold video meetings at the same time. A set of headphones with a built-in mic are critical for surviving remote working conditions. That way, everyone can have their own conversations without interfering with anyone else’s – even if you’re sharing the same table.

Boundaries

We bet you’ve heard this one “I’m not working from home, it feels more like I’m living at work”. If this is you, you need some boundaries ASAP. Ordinarily, you would probably get to work at around 8am and leave close to 5pm. With everyone online all the time though, working hours have become blurred and it can feel like there’s no distinction between work and home.

Our advice? Be firm about your working hours and stick to them within reason – if there’s an emergency at work, of course you’ll pitch in, but emails sent after 8pm can wait until the next morning.

A second screen

Trust us, you might think it’s ok to just work on a laptop, but connecting your laptop to a second, bigger screen will change the quality of your remote working life in a big way. A wide screen makes it easier to have multiple programmes open and keep on top of everything. Now that we all have Teams or Slack open during working hours, it’s really handy to be able to have your messaging platform open on one screen and your spreadsheets or other documents open on the other.

The LG 25UM58-P-Ultrawide Monitor ticks ALL the ultra-widescreen boxes, plus it’s got loads of split screen options. This means you can resize and display multiple windows at once with an impressive 14 viewing modes! Just imagine all the things you can keep track of, so when the boss asks out of the blue on your next Zoom call what the sales projections for Q4 are, you can glance at the screen and answer her immediately. Did someone say employee of the year?

A good routine

Without colleagues around you, it’s easy to forget about things like taking breaks, eating lunch or even just looking up from your work now and again. If you spend all nine hours of your working day sitting on your dining room chair looking at your laptop screen, you will be miserable. Instead, try to keep to the same routine that you would have if you were in the office, breaking up your work with tea breaks or mini walks around the garden. It will help you be more productive in the long run!

A UPS

Loadshedding is never cool, but it’s so much worse when it happens while you’re working remotely. Without an office park generator, you might be literally left in the dark and unable to connect to the internet and do your work. A UPS (or uninterrupted power supply) will make sure you can at least power your router so you can still connect to the internet even if there’s no power. They’re very small, don’t cost a fortune and are very easy to use.

With these six things, you should be a remote working pro in no time! Unfortunately though, we don’t have any advice on how to help your colleagues remember to hit that ‘unmute’ button before they start speaking at the next video meeting…

For those working from home enforced by the Covid-19 pandemic, for a while, it seemed to be working brilliantly – until it didn’t. While early surveys showed up to 80% of remote employees were more productive when working from home. It tuns out though that the more that is, the more things start to change.

The challenge of managing remote teams is only going to grow in the coming months, as more companies announce plans to permanently allow remote working. Twitter has already said that all its employees can telecommute. But many managers of remote teams are battling to know what is really going on in their teams, says Oran Cohen, the founder of online people management platform GWork.

“If productivity plummets after 30-40 days, what happens after 180 days? How do you onboard someone remotely? How do you gauge anxiety, and know who is battling and needs support? Who is slacking, and who is an asset? Most managers just don’t know the answers to these questions, which means they don’t always feel in control and struggle to have a full picture of how their employees are showing up,” said Cohen.

“Organisations are good at managing tasks, but are they thinking about leading their people? The remote work problem is real and complex, and requires innovative solutions. There are platforms out there that do culture, and others that measure performance. But none enable the view of a holistic journey to a remote workforce that organisations need right now,” said Cohen.

Part of the challenge is how to build trust and connection in remote teams. A CoSo Cloud study shows more than half of remote employees feeling disconnected from in-office employees, while a Buffer study on the state of remote work says 19% of remote employees report loneliness as their biggest challenge.

“The GWork platform empowers the manager to gain access to insightful data about their people, but it doesn’t stop there. Like a co-pilot for managing your remote teams, it links daily actions to performance to learning feedback, guiding the behaviour managers want and unlocking their employees’ ‘genius’ work remotely,” said Cohen. 

Cohen says it was important to put the psychology of how people grow and change at the heart of the GWork solution, and then guide them to change their behaviour to optimally fulfil their role. “What makes GWork unique is that it offers all of these solutions in one single platform, equipping managers with the people data they need to make intelligent decisions about their teams and enabling employees to get the feedback they need to grow, know where they stand and have a clear idea of how their work moves their organisation forward,” said Cohen.

Image credit – @cwmonty