The 4 Keys to Thriving at Work At Home

With over 2 decades helping enterprises tap into the unique Work-At-Home (WAH) delivery model, there are few people on the planet as experienced with this new reality as Jim Farnsworth - a recent guest on my OneTAKE livestream show on LinkedIn Live. Jim, the Executive VP of SYKES, is an expert in helping corporations design and transition to using at-home talent. So, I asked Jim to speak with me about specific processes and support systems that set everyone up for success.

Jim boils his system down to 4 S’s: safe, secure, supportive and successful. Here’s how to establish each of them!

Safe

It may sound strange - who isn’t safe in their own home? - but more goes into a safe work environment than you might imagine. Keeping your workspace organized and consistent is extremely important.

You need to have a solid desk and a comfortable chair (no slouching on sofas or beds!). Just because you have a standing desk at the office does not mean it’s a good idea to try to use your ironing board to achieve the same thing at home.

Setting up a safe, functional environment with no stray cords that a child or dog could easily run into is extremely important in order to avoid accidents. This will also help you treat your job as you normally would, letting you get into your workflow.

Secure

When working from home, the first step is to be in a room with a door that closes firmly. If not, you need to find some way of establishing a private environment. If you have a family or roommates, make sure they know that you’re working and not to bother you for anything that isn’t urgent.

Think everything is secure now? Not so fast. Turn that Alexa off, and any other listening device as well. It’s not just your own privacy anymore, you have screens displaying private information, you’re having private conversations, and the unfortunate reality is we never know who could be listening.

Supportive

You’re going to run into some of the same issues at home that you do at the office. An app stops working, your communication is faulty, software isn’t installed properly… you know the deal. Your company should still have IT protocols in place to assist its workforce.

You should also prioritize communication with your coworkers. Jump on Zoom, FaceTime or your preferred video conferencing software as often as possible. You can also set up virtual water coolers via Facebook where employees can come together to chat about anything work related or otherwise. This helps everyone stay sane, stay connected, and break up the workday from time to time.

Successful

In order to be successful, you need to understand yourself. Know your own personal style, know what’s required of you. If this is a situation that suits both you and your role, it may make sense to continue this into the future, allowing you to cut down on commuting!

In order to thrive, you’ll also need to manage distractions, know when to take breaks (go outside!), and stop yourself from binge eating all the Pringles in the pantry before 11am. Difficult, for sure, but important (you need those Pringles for the post work Netflix marathon).

A hidden danger: make sure you don’t slip into working too much. Without a clear boundary between work and home, some people may find themselves not being able to put work down. If this is you, you need to set up a strict schedule. You can even bring timers into play if that helps.

Lastly, cultivate your network. Make sure you’re in touch with your coworkers. Reach out to people when you need help, be there for people when they need help, and still have those casual, non work related conversations as well. Maintaining your relationships is essential to a good work day, and actually help you be more productive.

This is a challenging time for many of us, but it’s also an opportunity. Industries, economies, jobs, and personal lives are going through big changes that we haven’t even begun to fully understand. But, we are resilient, and positives will come out of this in the end. One of those potential changes being the opportunity to work remotely more often. If you set up a safe, secure and supportive home work environment, the success will follow!

Show Notes

OneTAKE Episode 11 with Jim Farnsworth

 Find OneTAKE on:

Stitcher

iTunes

Podbean

For updates or to get in touch, follow me on LinkedIn!