How to Increase Productivity for Work at Home Companies

At a time when working from home is becoming the new normal, many businesses are grappling with changes to the way they function. While we are learning to manage teams in a distributed way, our deadlines don’t get any longer. We spoke to Justin Cobb about some ways that we can quickly adjust to motivating productivity in work from home employees.

Track Progress

It’s easy to keep track of your employees progress when they are in the same office. We get used to regular check-ins and updates about the progress of our employees. But when employees are working from home, we may only communicate with them for 5% of the day or less. Sharing progress through video calls or emails can be a long process that falls short of what we need. Use digital tools to track the progress of tasks visibly and simply. Teams can use tools like Trello to share progress on tasks with everyone involved and get instant updates when tasks are completed.

Communicate Productively

Most businesses have integrated some sort of online communication into their workflow. However, you still might be using outdated tools that aren’t designed with business communication in mind. Sure, email and Skype can be powerful tools when used correctly. However, many more modern solutions have been created in recent years for businesses to take advantage of. Solutions like Slack and Microsoft Teams integrate communication with productivity tools, file sharing, and integrations with task management software.

Make It Personal

When we communicate using online tools it can be difficult to maintain the personal and empathetic touch that we may normally have as a manager. Communication by text is especially open to being perceived as cold. It may even appear angry if great care is not taken to manage tone. If a conversation is difficult or could be problematic, consider having that conversation through a video call. Even a phone call could be preferable. As a business owner, we want to make sure that we do our best to minimize frustrations for or our people. 

Justin Cobb is an international entrepreneur, based in the US, with a network of companies spanning the globe.