Are you working from home? You should be aware of professional norms and adhere to basic office etiquette

From decades, Silicon Valley has been entranced by the idea of "remote working". Many billions such as Facebook, Google, Apple and many software engineering companies would be happy to swap their designed offices into work from home.

While few of us even admit it, COVID - 19 forced us for the lockdown made us do the remote working on a massive scale. Zillions have had to work from home for weeks, which has boosted the sale of tablets and second-hand laptop in the market.

Much of the tech companies have undergone work from and the video conferencing services such as Google Meet, Webex and Zoom and the chat application Slack has been trusted as they are finally mature and reliable. But the thing to look at is that there is no proper user manual of the software.

Work from home has put all of us out of our everyday comfort zone and has made us set a new way to operate. There have been newfound benefits, but it comes not without its distractions. We all try to avoid distractions from anything that is not work-related- and try to replicate our workspace at home.

When we are working in an open-plan office we have to learn how to block out the conversations and phone calls around us, now it is a new array of sounds to get used to, it may be giggles, tears, Beat Bugs, but then we know we need to keep focus at the job at hand.

Employees are structuring their days- they need to set up all their appointments and meetings and have their to-do list which they find great pleasure in crossing off all accomplished jobs, they keep in touch with messages and regular calls to the team throughout the day.

Maintaining the motivation of the employees is another quandary for managers of remote teams. As there are benefits of WFH and that is the freedom to work where you want., whether you work in your home, a co-working space, or a coffee shop. Just like working in the office, when you are working from home one should be aware of professional norms and adhere to basic office etiquette.

 1. Choose the appropriate mode of communication with your team: It’s always best to make the things sorted and simple and pick the best out the available method for the communication to relay your message and convey sound virtual office etiquette.

 2.Mindful of Time Zones while communication: To make sure every one of your team gets to participate in official meetings during regular business hours, try to consider shifting the schedule around different time zones and make available the transcript of the virtual meeting for the download as employees lives in remote areas unable to attend because of scheduling conflicts.

 3. Don’t Brag: make your colleagues updated on your travels is wonderful, but constantly bragging about how far better your life is now due to over the net meetings, you might be offputting to your co-team members.

4. Don’t Waste Others’ Time: always Be prepared with talking points and stick to the agenda and the objective of the meeting. Derailing a meeting while you search for information and engage in some small-talk is not only unprofessional but also shows a lack of disrespect for everyone else’s time.

 As due to rising cases of this pandemic it has been prevalent for all the employees to perform tasks from a distance thanks to the advancement of computer networks. This has led to both inconveniences and opportunities for the company and the employees as well. Ultimately, it appears to me that such work pattern is still worthwhile, in a sense that it allows workers to overcome several disadvantages of conventional labour.

 On the one hand, working at home has its disadvantages, likely Distraction from the people in the neighbours, friends and family also might be very disruptive, thus reducing the productivity of your work, combined with the temptation to procrastinate and let the work pile up. Meanwhile, most of the employees sometimes find it hard to finish tasks because of not being able to bounce ideas off co-team members or because of breakdowns in communication through emails and phone calls.

 As a side note, I have read a lot about the impact of mental health and the importance of keeping active and exercising whenever possible, the one positivity that I take out of this whole situation is that there are no more excuses, We have the extra time now and We have the opportunity to prove to ourselves that We can make the most of our spare time.