8 tips to work productively from home

Many com­pa­nies have moved their teams to work remote­ly. In this regard, Google has devel­oped a num­ber of tips on how to work pro­duc­tive­ly and effi­cient­ly when employ­ees are in dif­fer­ent places.

Prepare your team for remote work

Make sure your team has all the right tools and process­es in place before mov­ing from work­ing in the office to work­ing from home. After switch­ing to remote work, you can take a few addi­tion­al steps to more effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate:

1. Cre­ate an online group for your team to eas­i­ly stay in touch. A group with email address­es of all team mem­bers allows for quick exchange of infor­ma­tion, and a chat room can be used for quick dis­cus­sions.

2. Check access to impor­tant doc­u­ments so that employ­ees can edit and com­ment on them if nec­es­sary. You can also cre­ate a shared dri­ve where your team can store, search, and access files from any device.

3. Sched­ule appoint­ments ahead of time. Set up cal­en­dar events, cre­ate a dis­cus­sion plan, and add relat­ed doc­u­ments to the event. Also make sure every­one knows how to use video con­fer­enc­ing.

Stay in touch with your team daily

Now that your team is set up and every­one is ready to work from home, it’s impor­tant that employ­ees inter­act with each oth­er. Here are some tips on how to orga­nize it:

4. Hold dai­ly meet­ings to stay in touch with your col­leagues. Work­ing from home can be an iso­la­tion for some, and video con­fer­enc­ing is a great way to con­nect. Make sure you can be seen through the cam­era when appro­pri­ate; present rel­e­vant con­tent and ask ques­tions to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going. If the time dif­fer­ence pre­vents every­one from join­ing the meet­ing, record it — mak­ing sure the par­tic­i­pants are will­ing to record it before­hand.

5. Share tasks and updates reg­u­lar­ly. Whether you’re doing it through a chat, a shared doc­u­ment that every­one updates, or a record of what’s been done, it’s a great way to stay con­nect­ed, informed, and keep track of what’s been done. You can also cre­ate an inter­nal site to con­sol­i­date impor­tant infor­ma­tion and resources in one place for your team, or to share infor­ma­tion more broad­ly with your orga­ni­za­tion.

6. Stick to work eti­quette. Just because your team mem­bers aren’t in the office does­n’t mean they aren’t busy. Check col­leagues’ cal­en­dars before sched­ul­ing meet­ings, when start­ing a chat con­ver­sa­tion, check first if it’s con­ve­nient to talk now. You can also inform your co-work­ers of your own avail­abil­i­ty by set­ting your work­ing hours and sta­tus in the Cal­en­dar. This way, if a team mem­ber tries to sched­ule a meet­ing with you out­side of busi­ness hours, they will auto­mat­i­cal­ly receive a warn­ing about it.

Using your home Wi-Fi for work

Shar­ing space and the Inter­net at home means you need to be mind­ful of the needs of your fam­i­ly mem­bers as well. Here are some tips.

7. Don’t spend all day video­con­fer­enc­ing. You have many tools at your dis­pos­al to keep in touch with your team: a chat, a joint doc­u­ment, a short form sur­vey or a quick con­fer­ence call. Choose what works best for your Inter­net shar­ing envi­ron­ment.

8. Find the best place to work. You may need to try sev­er­al dif­fer­ent options before find­ing the one that works best for you, how to focus on work and not dis­turb oth­ers at the same time.

These are just a few of the ways the G Suite team offers to col­lab­o­rate pro­duc­tive­ly from a dis­tance. For more infor­ma­tion, watch these videos of tips for work­ing from home and check out the lat­est updates in our Learn­ing Cen­ter for tips on work­ing from home.

More infor­ma­tion can be found on the offi­cial Google Ukraine blog.