Tips For Doing Effective Virtual Work From Home
Need a lock for your refrigerator? A growing trend of the virtual workplace is virtual work from home, even occasionally. Many consider flexible virtual work from home policies encouraging, producing increased productivity, decreased costs, greater choice for talent, and lower employee attrition.
This might be argued given the recent controversy when Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer called all virtual workers back to the office. Shortly after her announcement, New York Times’ columnist Maureen Dowd called it a “fem-quake” while Virgin CEO Richard Branson deemed it “a backwards step.” A “symptom of problems,” is how The Economist put it.
Whatever your opinion or company direction may be, don’t forget that there are several tips that can guide you to be more successful and overcome those distractions – a barking dog, a crying baby, and a ubiquitous refrigerator.
Yael Zofi, author of A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams, was the featured guest on Ora Shtull’s Need a lock for your refrigerator? video blog (also known as vlog) and offers tips on maximizing virtual work from home. Ora and Yael discussed the biggest challenges for those who work virtually, many who have never met their teammates and use technology as a means to communicate. Yael offered guidance on how to diminish problems while amplifying the benefits of working virtually.
Question: How to keep productivity levels high while minimizing the distractions around you with virtual work from home?
Yael shared tidbits on getting ready for work as if you were leaving the house, putting on work attire, creating a separate work area, and dedicating time for setting goals/agenda. And, Zofi suggests, don’t forget to take breaks throughout the day!
Question: How do you maintain relationships with people you do not see?
At their core, people like to connect, Zofi asserts. So spend time before or after virtual meetings to get to know each other, look for commonalities that you share. Food is a great example of what brings people together. No matter the culture, people always enjoy food!
Question: What things does a team need to think about when using technology with virtual work from home?
When it comes to technology, your virtual team needs to examine their common denominator. Yael explains that if one region/area has sophisticated technology available while another location/person only has phone capabilities, the common denominator for that team is a phone. Why? Because it gives all team members equal opportunity to interact. Technology is a useful medium to engage team members, so make sure you find your common denominator.
Need a lock for your refrigerator? gave useful, simple and thoughtful tidbits that anyone doing virtual work from home can apply. Yael covers each section more in depth in her book A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams.
Trudy Ann Channer
OD Consultant
Video Transcript:
Ora: I find myself at my refrigerator a bit too often. That’s because when I’m not meeting my coaching clients in their offices face to face, I’m at my home desk. My home desk is unfortunately only fifteen feet from my refrigerator. I’m part of a huge trend: the virtual workplace. You are too if you occasionally do virtual work from home, if you haven’t met so many people you work with or if you use technology to communicate.
My guest today, Yael Zofi, is going to tell us how to diminish the problems and amplify the benefits of virtual work from home. Yael there are so many distractions at home in addition to the refrigerator. What can we do to stay productive?
YZ: So the first thing you want to do when you get up in the morning for work, is get ready for work as if you were going out to an office. You get dressed, put your makeup on, have breakfast and don’t stay in your pajamas. Set yourself a separate area where that’s your workspace and even if it’s not a separate bedroom or room with the door which would be ideal, set a space that when you sit down that’s work and be able to focus. Give yourself some guidelines, set an agenda for your day and think about what are some of the ways you would handle interruptions, like the buzzer ringing, the dog barking, the baby crying. Make sure that you do take breaks, not necessarily to go to that refrigerator, but breaks during the day even to stretch and then come back and focus on your workday.
Ora: We all know that the best kinds of relationships are formed face to face, so what can we do to build relationships when we can’t even see the people we are working with?
YZ: That’s actually one of my passions, is all about connection and human beings at their core like to interact, and need to interact and it doesn’t matter what culture or what part of the world they come from. We’re social animals and we’re social beings. So you need to make time for interaction on your team and use what is available to you to create that. Some great techniques are teams using the first five minutes or the last five minutes of their meetings to get to know each other, and find something that connects all of you. Pose a question to everybody: what’s your favorite hobby? What’s your favorite movie or recent book you read? You’ll find that you have a lot of commonalities and it creates those bonds. So even though you don’t have the water cooler, you have the virtual water cooler.
Ora: Right, you mention technology so what do we need to think about when we’re using technology, like telepresence or Skype?
YZ: Technology is moving at a very rapid pace that is so fast that we keep having more tools available to us. My advice is find your common denominator. So make sure that if not all of your team members have the capability for video camera for example that’s not your common denominator, so everybody has equal opportunity to work together and interact. If you do have the possibility for telepresence or an advanced virtual technology, and again Skype is one of the most common that we’re all familiar with, but there are a lot of other tools out there and then make sure you do engage and use technology as a way to engage your team with each other.
Ora: Thank you Yael, one more tip, do invest in a lock for your refrigerator. Did you like this blog? Yes, then please like it, share it, tweet it, post it or simply post your comments below. I’m Ora, executive coach, power up your leadership presence.
