So, you're working from home now, huh? Here is some advice.

I know what you are thinking "great, another how to work from home article." Well, yes. While it may seem a little late to the race, the delay in completing this has given me plenty of additional material from which to work. Having observed a large number of people making the transition to WFH (almost all simultaneously) and seeing a significant amount of those people go through painful changes, publishing this now seems appropriate. 

A little background…..

When my company decided to move its headquarters, I went from being in an office with 40+ people and having most of my staff and peers available to me right outside my office to being by myself and all of my team and peers 4-5 states away. 

So much time and effort went into closing one office and turning up another, that I had put almost no thought into my home/remote office setup. I had worked from home plenty of days while waiting for deliveries, allowing contractors in the home to do work or staying away from the office because a family member or I was sick. It was no big deal. From a technology aspect, I was covered. However, working from home for a couple of days versus full time are very different scenarios. Inevitably, I had to make adjustments.  

I have been working from home/remotely for roughly four years now.  Some pointers…. 

Keep Your Morning Routine  

Treat your morning like you would any other workday. A morning routine is essential, and it helps set the tone for your day. Don't change your routine now just because you are working from home.   

Get your butt out of bed!  

Not having to fight your way through a morning commute is, well, glorious! Don't let your new commute, which consists of 10 steps from your bedroom to your new home office or workspace, convince you that it is ok to sleep in until 7:50 am. It's not. You are not on vacation.  

Now that you are awake get dressed!  

Vestis Virum Facit (Apparel Makes the Man). A reference that dates as far back as Homer's Odyssey, 675-725 BC. Appearance has an impact, both mentally and physically. Even the ancient Greeks understood this.  

While in today's far more relaxed business climate, it is not unusual to see people in casual clothing, even more so with COVID-19 forcing people to work from home, don't think it's ok to stay in your pajamas all day. While it may feel quite liberating to throw on jeans and a t-shirt, or not change at all, be presentable in accordance with your position, especially if your responsibilities require you to conduct face to face meetings via video conferencing.  

Keeping your morning routine will also give you more free time! The average American spends 25-30 minutes commuting to work. My commute was 45-60 minutes, one way. Now that I was working from home, I gained nearly 10 hours a week! 

Now that you are not commuting, what are you going to do with that all that extra time?  

Stop By The Watercooler 

Everyone who works in an office has an in-office startup routine. It might be greeting the receptionist or colleagues as you walk to your desk or running food to the break room or grabbing coffee before you sit down. Regardless, most people experience interaction with their co-workers. If you are a manager, you typically chit chat with your employees and your boss. Just because you are working from home doesn't mean this has to stop. It's probably more important than before.  

Even though you may have a collaboration platform like Microsoft Teams or Slack in place, it cannot replace the benefit of face to face communication. Face to face communication is critical for accurate perception of thoughts and emotion. Don't believe me? How many times have you had a colleague take an email, message, or text message out of context?  Most people have, and it's usually not your fault. No matter how carefully worded the message, not having the ability to hear a person's tone of voice or see their facial expressions as they speak can turn a simple inquiry into an interpretation of mistrust.  

I recommend a modified daily scheduled stand-up meeting via video conference. Make it a blend of informal, casual greetings, coffee talk ("you know, no big whoop"), and then move quickly to a scrum style agenda to get everyone on the same page with the day, projects & tasks. While you and your team may be spread across different time zones, you should do this as close to first thing in the morning as possible. Keep the meeting under 30 minutes.  

Don't let this be your only communication with your co-workers or staff. Use your collaboration platforms to share articles or other things of interest. However, use your video conference system as much as possible.  

Speaking of…..

Video Collaboration Tools – Do and Do Nots:

Know The Tool!

Above everything else, learn how to use the tools you have. There is nothing worse than watching someone fumble around trying to find settings, turn on screen share, etcetera. If your IT staff send you training documents or videos, use them.  

Be On Time!

Better yet, be early. Do not show up to a meeting minutes late and force everyone to listen to a recap of what you missed. If you are a moderator, set an expectation of punctuality and remind people if they show up late, the information will not be repeated.  

Be Aware Of Your Surroundings

As many people have moved to working at home due to COVID-19, we have seen more and more on-camera blunders. I guess it was to be expected, but it does not have to happen.  

The reality is that most of you were not expecting to be working from home. You may not be set up with, or have the room for a home office. The dining room table, coffee table, bed, dresser, or ironing board may now be your desk. It does not matter where you decide you can work but try to pick a place with a non-distracting background. While some video platforms allow you to blur out your background, it's safer just to assume that if you can see it, so can the participants on your call.  

So, if your only option is to work out of your bedroom, maybe hide the dirty clothes.  

Be Prepared

1. Check your connectivity. Sure, WiFi is convenient, but if you are like any modern home nowadays, your WiFi network is likely saturated with traffic form other devices. Streaming devices, video game consoles, cell phones, refrigerators, etcetera.  

• You should try to ensure a better experience with your video collaboration tools by closing out unused programs and, if possible, connect directly to your network via ethernet. That will provide a stable connection.  

1. Be eye to eye. Ideally, your webcam should be at eye level. That may not be possible for everyone. Set it as close to eye level is possible. It's never good to be looking up someone's nose.  Once you have your camera positioned, make sure you are looking at the camera during the call.  
2. "Can you hear me? Can you see me?" It's inevitable. Someone on your video call will not test their connections before joining the call and will spend valuable time fiddling with video and audio controls before you can get started. I have been on so many of these calls. Don't be that person.  

• Microphones, most people do not understand how they work. Without going into a long explanation, just get as close to the mic as you can. Better yet, use a headset! Additionally, just like a distracting visual background, if there is much noise in your home (kids, wash machine, TV, neighbors), your participants are likely going to hear that noise as well. Either find a quieter place to participate in the call or invest in a headset with noise cancellation to help mute the background noise. Your colleagues will thank you.   

1. Lighting is critical. People want to see your face, not your silhouette. While natural light is best, facing your back to a window or other bright light source will cause your face to appear very dark. If that is your only option, try adding a light in front of you to illuminate your face.  

Start your video collaboration tool before the meeting and check to see that your image appears correctly and that your audio settings are correct. If not, make adjustments.  

One additional thing to mention, if for whatever reason you dial into a video conference from your phone, please first turn Off your computer volume and microphone. Not doing so will create feedback or echoes for everyone else!  

The Children! 

We have all seen the video of the gentlemen doing a live interview from his home office while his kids stroll into the background making a bunch of noise and a panicked mother diving in to get them out. He is the poster child for what can go wrong. While he can probably laugh about it now, it was incredibly embarrassing for him at the time.  

Many people working from home also have children with them due to school closures in many parts of the country (and world). Despite everyone understanding the complexity that situation can add to a daily workload and a home working environment, and many people are accepting of it at the moment, children can still be a major distraction when you are trying to focus, lead or simply take notes on a project or other work discussion. Try not to have them present at your critical video conferences.  

If you have toddlers, try to arrange your video calls around their nap time. If they are older, try using a stoplight system with them (this works for adults as well). If you are looking for a quick print poster, you can put up for your family to follow, DM me. Or, involve your children and have them draw a stoplight on a whiteboard or paper explaining why it is being used and how.  

• Red, mommy and/or daddy are busy, please wait and be quiet (unless it is an emergency).  
• Yellow, mommy or daddy are busy but available (not playtime).  
• Green, let mommy or daddy have it!  

For those of you looking for a more tech-savvy way to handle this, try Luxafor's products. I discovered Luxafor a couple of years ago. I swear by their products, and I use them in my home and at HQ.  

Establish a Moderator

Group conversations can be difficult when multiple people are trying to convey ideas or thoughts. Often, you experience people talking over each other. In a normal setting, this would be ok. In a video conference setting, this interaction can a significant challenge. Even more so if the conference is experiencing delays in audio. It can kill a meeting real quick.  

It is best to establish a set of ground rules for your meetings to make them effective. My suggestions:

1. Establish a moderator who controls the agenda, flow of the meeting, and who decides is going to speak and when.  
2. Set your agenda to allow for everyone to participate in a controlled manner.  

• For those topics where you want everyone's input, call upon them to speak one at a time. Set that expectation early. 
• Set an expectation to everyone on the call that they are to make their point, statement, presentation quickly, and concisely so time is available to others.
• Certain conversations, you may want people to be able to interrupt. Set that expectation before you start on that topic and allow them to do so by a raise of a hand or other visual cue.  
• Certain conversations you may not want anyone to interrupt. Set that expectation before you start on that topic and then allow for controlled Q&A after the person has finished presenting.  

3. Do not have side conversations during a video conference. That is extremely distracting and can be seen as rude.  

Finally, whatever collaboration platforms your company uses, use them! However, please remember to keep it professional and assume everyone can see or hear you. Working from home doesn't mean the corporate policies go out the window, and your company's collaboration tools are not Facebook or Tik Tok.  

General "Things"

Distractions

They are everywhere. Especially at home. Kids, spouse, family, pets, TV, food, neighbors, etcetera. And let's not forget all the distractions from those darn notifications! 

Look, you are going to have to find a way to tamp down the number of distractions that will hit you. It is going to take discipline and you are going to have to set expectations and enforce them if it involves others. Otherwise, your day will start at 8 am and end at 9 pm. Or, you simply will not be able to keep up, and you will end up in a state of continually falling behind. It is an overwhelming feeling.  

"People spend an average of 11 minutes on a project before they're interrupted. It takes them on average 25 minutes to get back to the point they were at before a distraction, according to a UC Irvine study." ~ trainingmag.com 

Everyone's situation and style are unique. I cannot offer you any real advice other than to be very observant every time you are distracted. Take note of the distractions over the course of 1-2 weeks and then analyze the data and come up with a mitigation plan for each distraction.  

If you are interested in what I have done to "cut down the noise" (and it is significant), I would be more than happy to share that story with you. DM me! 

Voicemail

If you are like many people, you forwarded your work phone to your cell phone. Now might be a good time to change that goofy voicemail greeting to something a little more professional.  

Don't what all those unwanted calls. Do not forward your phone and just dial into your company voice mail a couple of times a day. Give out your cell phone to only those critical people within your company.  

Expectations

Does your boss expect to be able to reach you at any time during regular business hours? If you are in different time zones, which zone applies? Are you also taking care of a family member or children and can't be available at certain times? Does your boss know this? Does your staff know this? 

Providing answers to questions like this will help establish what is expected of you and if you manage people, what you expect of them. It takes 5 minutes. Do it.  

Security

Cyber threats are all around us all the time. Many home devices are setup with weak security or no security at all. Most people do not understand the risks and just install these devices paying no attention to the potential risk they can play on your home network. Now that you are working at home, you are potentially compounding the numbers of threat vectors to your work devices and company’s systems and data. 

In other words, your CIO and IT staff may be living their worst nightmare right now. Sure, your IT team may have endpoint security on your device(s) and ask you to use a VPN, but that is not a guarantee of security (frankly, there is no absolute guarantee). 

Your IT teams may have gone from managing a very secure and tightly controlled networking environment to one of numerous environments of which no two are the same. And, because they are not aware of your home network environment, they are partially blind to what those threats may be. However, you can help them out.  

1. If your IT team is giving you instructions on how to securely connect to your corporate systems, please follow the instructions.  
2. Do not do any work on publicly available WiFi. Just don't.  
3. If your IT team is telling you, "No, you cannot do that" because of some security concerns, just listen to them. They are trying to protect you and the company (that's part of their responsibilities). 
4. You should be the only person using your company devices. It is not ok for your spouse or children to be using those devices.
5. If you have been given a VPN, for gosh sake, just use it.  
6. That cool-looking email you just received from someone you do not know? Delete it. Don't click the links. Do not open the attachments.  
7. Be very aware of unexpected emails touting anything related to COVID-19. That has become a new phishing tactic.  
8. Do not surf social media on your company devices. Yes, your systems can be compromised through social media.  
9. If your company uses a helpdesk ticket system, use it. Don't go around the protocols and send emails that will just get lost in an inbox.  
10. Be patient. Many IT teams are underfunded, understaffed, and overworked. Trust me, they feel the weight of their responsibilities, and they know your issues are important. If they could clone themselves, they would.  

Wrap It Up!

While this article's original intent was not a response to COVID-19, the situation brought about by the pandemic has undoubtedly had an influence and makes it more "relevant". This situation is forcing society to make significant but temporary changes. Many industries and companies have had to take drastic measures. Some companies have made the transition with little to no hurdles, while others have still not been able to adapt adequately. Revenues are taking a hit or have been lost altogether, employees are being terminated or furloughed, the markets are a seesaw, unemployment has skyrocketed overnight. Lives and livelihoods are being lost. It has caught everyone off-guard, but it is temporary.  It could always be worse. 

If you are lucky enough to be still employed, it appears at least for now, that many of you will be in work from home status for some time. Take your job and responsibilities as seriously as you did when you were working at the office. Maybe even more seriously. 

Photo Credits: Ruth Eileen Photography, theodysseyonline.com, freepik.com, The Office - NBC, Gerannas.wordpress.com, BBC News, Luxafor.com, information-age.com