The global pandemic has made working from home (WFH) a normalized routine for millions of employees. With technologies such as Skype, Facetime, Zoom, Google Hangouts, authenticator apps, and cloud computing, employees no longer need to make the arduous commute to work every day. With texting and emails, it is no longer imperative to be working full-time in an office to be a productive member of the team. In actuality, many different kinds of work can be done just as effectively from a home office.

For any employee working from home, it is paramount to ensure that you are set up to be productive working from home. This will comprise of having a designated workspace with the right technology. Although not every employee has a designated home office, he or she will have to set up an office space that is specifically for work and nothing else so that the employee can work productively with few distractions.

For employees who are also parents, they will also need to have effective methods dealing with their children who are similarly at home conducting home-based learning. Employees will need to foresee and prepare for potential disruptions and keep these disruptions to a minimal whilst working from home.

When the employee works from home, he or she must be equipped with the right tools for video-conferencing such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams to stay in constant contact with his or her with internal and external work stakeholders. He or she will also need the appropriate equipment such as a laptop, passcodes, and instructions for remote login, and possibly requiring a two-factor authentication on their mobile or token. The employer needs to set ground rules on whether they need the employee to work from nine-to-six or is there flexibility as long as the employees gets the job done.

When the employee works from home, communication is just as crucial, whether via a mobile or messenger tool. Some firms may require the employer to route the direct desk number to a mobile phone to communicate with strategic internal and external work partners and clients. If the employee’s job involves making international calls, he or she will need to ensure there are applicable apps such as WhatsApp and Skype which are useful internet applications allowing users to make internet calls around the globe at reasonable rates.

Working from home means that the employee will have to invest on getting the right internet speed with a good Wi-fi router. With children at home carrying out their home-based learning, they will also need to be connected to Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and with multiple users riding on the limited bandwidth, this could inevitably slow down internet speed.

With minimal supervision when an employee works from home, it is critical that the employee creates and use a daily task list to avoid distraction on spending too much time on a certain task. This is essential to keep the employee on track with various tasks on-hand, ensuring that the employee meet his or her work deadlines. Some managers would ask their staff to submit a work plan for the week to track their progression. Managers should continue to set-up a 1-1 periodic call to ensure there is constant engagement with their staff and to provide encouragement during the pandemic.

With the outbreak of the global pandemic, working from home is one of the key alternatives that employers can and should take to lessen human contact and to avoid forming clusters so that the community spread cases can remain at a minimum. There will inevitably be circumstances where staff have to return to office for specific reasons, and employers should similarly ensure that the governmental guidelines and adhered to and that safety of the staff is the first priority.

Working from home can be exciting, empowering and but it can also be stressful. The employee will need to stick to their daily task list and work plan. The employee must also plan ahead and enforce self-discipline and focus. Working from home will require the employee to adapt to circumstances, be flexible and accept impending work changes whilst keep good habits engaging in hours of uninterrupted work. In reality, employees don’t have it easy working from home, they are just working from a different locality.

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