Remote Working Professionally

For my entire career, starting back in 2000, I have worked predominantly remotely. Along the way I have learnt a thing or two and refined my approach. In this article I will share some of those tips with you.

Tip 1 - Avoid headaches

Do you get headaches every Monday?

Is your workstation right by the window?

Yes and yes?

Sounds like eye strain to me. The brightness from the window differs to the brightness on your screen and the difference is making your eyes work too hard. Shift your desk or put up a blind.

Tip 2 - Create a high productivity environment.

One of the reasons I like to work remotely, usually from home, is that it can be much easier to hit a state of flow than it is in a busy office. A peaceful home office can be perfect for getting in the zone, but only if you don't negate the benefit by neglecting to create a proper workspace with decent equipment.

Tip 3 - Structure your days.

Flexibility is an often cited benefit of working from home, but I find it is best to structure that flexibility. Know in advance what your working hours will be, when you will be picking up the kids, running some errands or heading to the gym.

This will minimise your context switching, allow you to work in extremely productive bursts and enhance comms with your colleagues by establishing regular availability patterns.

Tip 4 - Redundant internet access

If you are working from home it is likely that you are reliant on good internet access to work efficiently. It is therefore beneficial to ensure that your working day cannot be wiped out by an ISP outage. Aim to have a reserve provider that operates on a completely different network. My primary connection is with BT, my backup is Virgin Media and the last resort is Vodafone 4G.

Tip 5 - House rules

If you work from home and share the house with family or flatmates it is important they know that when you are working, you are working. That means you are not available to change the batteries in Thomas the Tank Engine, discuss last night's football results or plan tonight's dinner.

But when you clock off, you can do all of those things rather than commute home knowing that you have delivered high value effort to your team.

Tip 6 - Communicate, communicate, communicate

Make sure your team is setup to communicate effectively with remote participants. This is important to ensure that you can work effectively as part of a geographically dispersed team, but it is also important in terms of fostering strong personal relationships across a team which rarely, if ever, meets in person.

Tip 7 - Leave the home office at the end of the day

A benefit of having a dedicated work space is that at the end of the day you can leave the office, shut door and resist the temptation to keep working on your code, or design, or pitch deck, or spreadsheet when you should be spending time with your family.

When remote working is done right you don't need to justify it by working 24/7, you justify it by demonstrating that it is a more productive way of working.

Tip 8 - Have good equipment

You know that echo on conference calls? Often that is down to participants using the integrated microphone and speakers on their laptop. Try using a headset.

You know that code you are writing? Where is it backed up if your hard drive fails. Try onsite and cloud backups.

Do you work more efficiently with two or more screens? Get them.

Tip 9 - Keep reading

One downside of scrapping the commute is that you lose a block of time that is perfect for reading, listening and learning. The danger that presents is that you can stagnate. Combat this risk by continuing to devote time to your ongoing skills development, even if you are no longer sat on a train with nothing better to do.

Tip 10 - Be a remote working evangelist

Remote working is most effective when business leaders recognise it as high productivity working arrangement and invest in adopting processes that leverage its benefits. It should not be considered a perk, it should not be associated with lower remuneration. You should demonstrate and advertise that when you have the flexibility to choose where and when you work, your contribution to the team is maximised and you should help the organisation to optimise processes around remote working.