By Bevan Moller | Catalyst Directions
Companies that offered partial or full remote options for staff experienced an unexpected benefit when the pandemic hit – they were already prepared to work from home.
Here at Catalyst Directions, as much as it stung to abandon our office for the co-worker-less solitude of home, there were virtually no disruptions to our workflow.
We didn’t have a pandemic in mind when we came up with our systems, but a remote-friendly culture saved us quite a few headaches in the early days of the restrictions.
If you’re looking for a way to bolster your business’s general resilience to the unexpected, remote working capabilities are one of the simplest ways to achieve that. Here are three simple tips to get you started.
Offer a rotating remote day
This has the added benefit of allowing you to keep your offices emptier to make social distancing easier.
Far from using that time to slack off, most studies show that employee productivity tends to increase when they work from home.
Seek secure cloud storage
If everyone on staff has access to what they need from their secure devices at home, you are going to be able to keep the gears turning and if the unexpected ever happens, you will bounce back faster.
Become familiar with remote-friendly tools
Now that everybody knows about Zoom and other conferencing software, consider replacing some of your in- person meetings with virtual ones.
Why? They eliminate the time spent walking, driving or flying to meetings so more “actual” work can be done. In cases where participants are flying to meeting, the cost savings can be huge over time.
You will quickly get used to virtual meetings and establish new conference etiquette. Let’s take the lessons learned from remote working in 2020 and forge ahead stronger than ever.