Do’s and Don’ts of Working from Home!

By Aditi Maheshwari

How prepared are you to take the world by storm with the outbreak of covid19? Well, whether you or your company accept it or not working from home is the new work culture we are heading towards. With the various health and safety measures which include social distancing, dished out on a daily basis to help save people from contracting the virus, work-life or simply put ‘physical corporate space’ are beginning to move their offices to the clouds if you know what I mean. While working from home is not new to a certain category of people, there are a certain class of people who lack the buzz in working from home and might also find this very challenging in the beginning. However, if handled with a positive attitude and balanced approach we can actually leverage the strength of working from home. To maintain a balance between your personal and professional life is easy if you keep certain points in mind. Sharing in this article are some dos and don’ts of working from home so that you can enjoy the best of both worlds. 

Do’s 

• Have a set work space for a home office, as the more organized you will be the better results you will achieve. Keep your home office Skype friendly. As it is quite normal to conduct conference calls, video chatting, etc. for attending meetings online and so it’s advisable to keep things such as files, documents, etc handy to avoid pitfalls and time wastes. 
• Plan your day in advance. When you will be clear in your mind about the tasks that are your top priority, you will be more productive. 
• While work from home gives us the advantage of having flexible working hours yet it is always good to be consistent in having specific fixed work hour for increased efficiency and productivity. Prefer traditional working hours as a business is always a two-way process and thus require communication with other parties. Also, clearly communicate your working hours with your family, friends and neighbours to avoid any sort of personal engagements during that time so that you can be as professional as possible.  
• Avoid the luring distractions of the comfy bed, heavy meals, small naps, Netflix, etc. 
• Maintain a healthy lifestyle by maintaining a proper schedule, maintaining a proper diet, sticking to the exercising routine, avoiding lethargy in the form of spending time on the couch or bed doing nothing, drink lots of water, take short breaks while working, walk and stretch, etc. Never compromise on discipline as to work from home requires more discipline to be executed than usual and without discipline, you are incapable of anything good.
• Never involve yourself in personal tasks during office hours. The greatest weakness of work from home is that we usually get tempted to do personal tasks such as laundry, cooking, attending to family members or neighbours during the office hours which in turn makes us lose focus and we are unable to stick to our schedule and thus the result is inefficiency, frustration, incomplete tasks and pure time waste.
• Enhance your communication skills. Since you won’t have any visual cues to support or guide your conversations and the talks will completely depend on online communication such as instant messaging, phone calls, emails, etc it is important to be clear and concise to avoid misunderstandings. Always remember, good communication skills are a reflection of a great personality. 

Don’ts

• Never discuss personal life issues during professional conversations. It’s natural to be inclined to discuss personal issues in the home-based office environment but by all means, avoid this pitfall.  
• Limit the number of times you check your phone to avoid unnoticed time lapse.
• It’s important to keep the necessary equipment such as a computer, scanner, printer, etc but don’t burden yourself with the equipment you can do without. 
• Stay connected with fellow officials, customers, etc. Connection builds trust and helps in leveraging the technical support needed. Staying connected may seem not so important activity but if managed well gives fruitful results in the form of long-term healthy relationships. Even while you work for others you represent your personal brand and when you voice your brand in a balanced approach where it’s not over communicative or disconnected for that matter it results in magical trust-building. People usually invest in the organization they trust. Small things help in achieving big dreams so never underestimate the so-called “small factor”.