This year is really special for organizations. They had to adapt in a rush to new ways of working. A lot of employees are now working from home. This evolution is creating unique challenges for companies. They have to maintain a high level of productivity in a competitive environment. But at the same time, employees can’t get together the way they used to before. So let’s go through the available options to overcome this challenge.
Allow employee to find each other
When all the employees are in the office, when they have a question, they can ask a colleague or call the front desk to get assistance. At home, they are on their own to find the right person to contact. Even worse, they don’t have the contact details of all their colleagues. This can easily be solved by installing a corporate directory software. This kind of software allows employees to quickly find the contact details of anyone within the organization. It also gives useful information about the organization structure. That way, they can find the phone number or email address of any colleague in the company.
Leverage video conferencing
For decades, video conferencing was restricted to very few companies because of the associated costs and technical complexity. During the last few years, several solutions have been made available and allowed a fast adoption in a lot of companies. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are the current leaders. Those softwares allow people to connect with others for quick one on one sessions or larger meetings. You can share your screen to show some slides or work on a sheet. These solutions really changed the game. You can now work from anywhere while keeping the contact with your team.
Share priorities on a regular basis
To be efficient, you need to receive some priorities for your week and so on. Without guidance, some employee will focus on what they prefer to do versus what they really need to do. This will result on project delays and issues with customers. To avoid that, management has to organize a team meeting on a regular basis where targets are shared and discussed with the audience. It is also top management duty to regularly set a global session to share company results and targets. While working from home, employee can quickly feel isolated so management has to make extra efforts to reconnect them with the organization.
Take care of everybody
Some employee will take action to keep the contact with their colleagues and management team. But others won’t do anything. They will wait for calls and if nobody calls them, then they will sit alone with their problems. Of course, the manager has a role to play here. But this isn’t enough. Human resources team has to take some actions to make sure that employees don’t feel isolated. To achieve that, they can share good practices, organize some cross organization sessions and trainings. A training on a soft skill is a good way to allow people to exchange with others.
