Getting the best out of you & your team whilst you’re working remotely!
1. Your mighty workspace
Find a space in your home where you know you can concentrate. If you are heading onto a call, try to minimise background noise by picking a location that you are least interrupted in – just not the toilet!
As this is not always possible, you can hit the ‘mute’ button in Microsoft Teams until a noise has gone. If you’re on a video call and you have distractions or perhaps sensitive information in the background – you can use background blur in Microsoft Teams to keep only you always in focus.
2. Regular communication
Your patterns for working may be different when you are at home to when you are in the office. For example – working around children or other commitments, it is important to communicate this to your team so they understand when the optimum time to contact you is. You can use Outlook to communicate this to your team and update your calendar to reflect your working hours as a point of reference for colleagues.
3. Healthy boundaries
Without the standard working times and commute to and from the office, it can be difficult to switch off from work. It’s important to take breaks, eat, drink well and switch off by clocking off at the end of the day. Microsoft MyAnalytics is a useful tool to work smarter
with personal productivity insights. This can help you understand and improve your work patterns, such as times of the day you are working, and then help you gain uninterrupted time to focus, being able to disconnect and recharge, as well as online networking
and collaborating effectively. Microsoft MyAnalytics will send you a weekly email digest as well as giving you access to a dashboard with your private data on.
4. Press Record
When you start your video or voice meeting, ask permission from members to record the session for future reference. Once permission has been granted, start the meeting and hit the ‘record’ button. Once a session has been recorded it automatically gets uploaded to Microsoft Stream…
…that way, if team members miss the session, they can then watch it later at their earliest convenience. If team members are limited on time and can’t playback the whole video, Microsoft Stream can automatically generate a searchable transcript of the recording for team members to lookup the parts that are most important to them.
5. Go online for meetings
When remote working, social isolation can cause unhappy employees. That’s why ensuring meetings have a viral ‘join’ option, colleagues can join the conversation from the comfort of their home – so turn that video on! Face-to-face interactions and social connections are so important when remote working, Microsoft Teams is perfect with its video call functionality to keep up good relationships with the team – you can even get fun filters to improve the experience!
6. Digital Workplace
It’s easy to feel distant and disconnected from your organisation when you’re remote working. Log into your intranet regularly to stay connected with your companies updates and as a central point of navigation and engagement for all corporate communications.
7. Be Inclusive
A conference call with many members on can make it hard for some members to share their thoughts and ideas. It’s also more difficult on a call to read social cues for when it is your time to talk. If members of the team have questions, they can be posted via Microsoft Teams call chat functionality.
8. Chat little & often
The quick chat whilst making the round tea or heading out for lunch can be what people miss when they work remotely. Why not think of chat messages in Microsoft Teams as your virtual making a cup of tea and deliberately contact team members to check in and see how they are!
9. Unite your team!
Working at home can feel isolating. It’s important to create opportunities for the whole team to virtually be together. Microsoft Teams can support this via daily check ins with team calls or a virtual coffee.
10. Have a little fun 🙂
Use Microsoft Teams to encourage fun activities and challenges to maintain moral. Holding mini competitions or praising employees for creative ideas is a great way to help the team stay positive, engaged and energised. Don’t forget those funny filters!