Hooray (Oh no) – udalenka

The abrupt transition to remote work for many has become a real challenge. Most of the employees of Localization and Support – departments of the Plarium Krasnodar studio – have been working remotely for about five years, but over the past month they also had to overcome some difficulties. We asked the guys to give some tips on how to effectively organize remote work and what is important to consider.

Training

At the preparatory stage, many important decisions are made, the legal part is taken into account, additions to labor contracts are signed … But I want to focus on what will affect the entire further work process.

It is important to think about the psychological state of employees for whom remote work is new. Let them know: management knows what they are doing, everything is planned, they are in good hands. Here, the confidence of the leader himself plays an important role. It is also worth considering that nothing calms anything better than well-established work processes: each employee must understand how to act in the new conditions, and should not feel difficulties.

Speaking of processes, if you didn’t have a task setting tool before, now you definitely need it: you won’t go far on verbal agreements and e-mail. What will be a task tracker – depends on the needs of the company. We have experience with many tools, and among them:

  • Jira – can be used as the main task manager for all departments involved in the work on the product;
  • Hansoft is a flexible system that allows you to closely monitor work processes and time spent;
  • Asana – a simple tool with an intuitive interface, convenient for small teams;
  • Trello – an even simpler option, the good old “board” for conducting tasks;
  • Google Sheets is the leader of our list in terms of simplicity and accessibility, allowing you to customize the process of tracking tasks for yourself, use various formulas and diagrams, format documents for more convenient perception of information.

Keep in touch

Team Info Field and Mutual Support

Having sat down at home computers, your employees will slowly begin to forget that they are a team. Now you can’t approach a colleague, not meet anyone during the break, so someone will feel a lack of information. On a remote site, it is especially important to give the team tasks that encourage them to communicate with each other. We should try to organize a common information field so that everyone can participate in the discussion of working issues. Video conferencing is well suited for this, which contributes to greater engagement, productive and easy communication.

Not seeing a person, finding out about his condition is quite difficult. If the employee is not used to reporting on his own difficulties, then the manager may remain in the dark and fail to prevent an aggravation of the situation. Set your subordinates to the maximum openness, inform about your readiness to help if necessary. Participate in the life of the team, assign personal and general calls. The more distinct your presence, the better the employee will feel support (but do not go too far!).

You must not allow emotional isolation and detachment of an employee, because you run the risk of getting instead of a team a group of alienated people who are not interested in the quality of the work performed. Organize a space for informal communication in a team – chat rooms for flooding in messengers, groups on social networks with company or department news – and tell them about, for example, what was done last week or will be done in the next, exchange memes. If you like custom solutions, you can go further – modern technologies even allow you to organize corporate Internet radio.

Online Communication Rules

In remote work, the importance of Internet communication is increasing at times. It is important to discuss with the team, to regulate the most diverse forms of interaction, which would allow everyone to remain in the same information field, be involved – and not interfere with each other’s work. Here are a few rules you may find useful.

  • Maintain order in the chats, find and use the messenger that is right for you, set up lists of conversations and contacts so as not to get lost in the increased number of channels.
  • Think about alternative communications and when to use them. Employees should be able to call a colleague on a mobile or home phone if they don’t answer messages or if it is easier to discuss the matter verbally.
  • Make sure that each employee has everything necessary for video calls (headphones, camera). Do not underestimate this communication format: it great makes up for the lack of non-verbal signals – gestures, facial expressions – and reduces the likelihood of a multi-valued interpretation, which often happens during correspondence.
  • By persistently knocking on a colleague in a chat or trying to urgently get through to him, we may not see how several more people are knocking on him at the same moment, demanding attention, and the colleague himself is sorely busy. Use statuses in instant messengers, for example, or Google Calendar – any tool that allows you to take into account the employment of each other.

We use several communication tools:

  • Google Hangouts – For video calls with employees across multiple departments. Very convenient, because there is synchronization with Google Calendar, which allows everyone to see when a meeting is scheduled;
  • Slack – for quick unplanned calls;
  • Discord – for continuous interaction with the team. Sitting in the “room”, you can verbally contact a colleague at any time. This format creates the effect of presence and raises team spirit.

Quality control

The udalenka format inevitably raises questions about monitoring employee productivity and the quality of their work. The manager finds himself in a situation where he cannot just look around the office and check the busyness of his subordinates – who works and who disappeared somewhere. He has a completely understandable desire to tighten control, but this desire should be restrained, because it can prevent subordinates from working.

There are programs that collect analytics from the desktop on the employee’s computer during the day, for example Screenshot Monitor. They can be useful if wages are hourly and it is important for the manager to know whether a person is spending his hours or working out. In addition, using such tools, you can respond in a timely manner when an employee makes a serious mistake or his performance decreases – in general, when help is needed.

However, in our experience, the effectiveness of such tools is ambiguous: it sometimes demotivates, especially representatives of creative professions. We do not recommend introducing additional types of reporting or requiring people to constantly confirm their presence in the workplace. It is better to start from the following thought: if the quality of the result does not raise questions, then we can assume that obligations to the employer are fulfilled.

Summary

How not to miss anything important? We offer a small checklist.

  • The team is in the same information field – thanks to regular phone calls, general mailing, and chat in messengers.
  • Everyone appears at the workplace without delay – this can be tracked by activity in the general chat or during daily morning calls.
  • Each specialist knows exactly what and when to do. A task tracker, work instructions, clearly defined job responsibilities are available to him. You can at any time see the status of the implementation of all current tasks and evaluate the load of the team.
  • Common channels and norms of Internet communication work. Employees know where to get the information they need, how to contact colleagues, administrators or system administrators if necessary.
  • All administrative documentation is maintained correctly and in full. Even working remotely, people can go on vacation, take sick leave, etc.

But the most important sign that will help you understand that the transition to a remote site was successful is this: the main processes continue to be performed and the effectiveness of the team does not decrease. It is interesting to note that many employees, working at home, demonstrate even greater productivity than in the office. Obviously, the udalenka has both pros and cons, but there is nothing to be dealt with. Good luck

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