Are you working remotely now and probably into the future? If you answered yes, you’re probably also wondering how you can help your newly remote team manage their time better to boost productivity?
Productivity and Remote Working
Remote workers worldwide will tell you they get more done at home but staying on task can be a bit of a challenge at times.
Here are five ways that you can help your remote team boost productivity.
Manage as Much as You Can Centrally
Teams can get stressed if there is a lot to manage and no clear sense of direction, especially if they were used to being fully office-based with a strong management team.
Help them out by managing as much as possible centrally and cloud based. Solutions like Email signature software for G-Suite can mean it’s as easy as one or two clicks to change the whole company’s email signatures rather than everyone needing to do it individually
Say No (and mean no)
Learning to say no, especially saying no to a boss, is very difficult for most people. Different personality types of handle saying no easier than others (those low in Agreeableness, for example), and this is why it’s important to build an open culture of pushing back.
Everyone is dealing with underlying stress right now and teaching your employees that it’s ok to (politely) say no to tasks they have no capacity for is a tool that will help them cope.
Use Timers and Website Blockers
It may seem a bit like the schoolyard to go blocking websites for your staff but using website blockers isn’t about restricting what websites they can and cannot access; most remote workers will use their own internet connection anyway.
Website blockers from a time management point of view is a great way to help you stay on task but removing the temptation to jump on Twitter for five minutes.
For this one, be sure to speak with your team first and make it an opt-in only option.
Invest in A Password Vault
How many times per day do you hear the words “what’s the password for…”? If you use services that require one login, get a password vault for you and your team to save time and speed things up.
Password vaults allow the safe and secure way to store usernames and passwords of shared resources without them being saved on personal devices or, in some cases, the need even toshare the actual password.
Use the Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is an almost too-simple technique for deciding which tasks are important and which aren’t.’
There are four sections in two rows; on row one, you will write your most critical tasks but split them into urgent and non-urgent. On row two,you’ll write your non-critical but urgent and non-critical and not urgent tasks.
Visualizing your tasks in this way will allow you to see what you can dump and what needs doing yesterday.
