A collection of practical tips for working from home. All contributions are welcome, learn more on how to do so here.
Sander Mangel, Sebastian Klett
- Designate a room as office. This helps keeping home and work seperated.
- Let your colleagues know when you are online, and make sure to be available via a chat program or email.
- Keep a routine. Start at the same time, have a lunch break and stop at the end of the day.
- Maintain regular hours.
- Don't forget to log your time if you have to.
- Assume every meeting is a remote meeting.
- Send meeting details well ahead of time.
- Try to avoid calling in as a group under one account, groups are harder to hear and talk amongst themselves
- Speak English at all times if there is more than one language.
- Invest in proper audio
- When hosting a group; teleconference microphones like Jabra Speak.
- For callers sitting alone; use a proper headphone with mic
- Mute when not speaking
- Use a tool such as zoom.us, whereby, jit.si, Discord or hangouts
- That has a web version that requires no installation.
- If possible has dial-in.
- Recording option.
- No offline tools are used, everything is online.
- Stickies & Whiteboard? Use Miro.com / awwapp.com
- Notes? Share a Google Doc.
- Appoint a note-taker and post notes for others to read afterwards.
- For more than 2 callers; appoint a moderator that involves people dialling in by asking them to speak and checks chat/slack channels if someone is mentioning a connection issue.
- Stable internet connections are important
- Make sure everyone has at least 1.5Mbps up AND down, test with fast.com.
- Slow connection? Dial in.
- Disable video when possible, have one person share their screen.
- Always send a summary with actions to take via mail as a followup
- As mentioned before; stick to a routine. This is one of the most important advices.
- When possible, go for a daily walk or jog to get some fresh air
- Take breaks away from the work station so once in a while
- With a full kitchen and pantry just steps away its tempting to snack a lot, go for healthy options
- Socialise with colleagues. Try to set up regular catchups to talk off-topic with your colleagues or attend online meetups.
- Take sick days when you're ill.
- Before starting to work, follow all the preparations as if you were going to the office (cleaning, breakfast, clothes, make-up, ...).
- Ventilate the rooms before starting work, during the lunch break and at the end of the working day.
- If you want to take advantage of the remote for small home keeping activities (washing machine, cleaning, dustbins, other..) take advantage of the mid-morning / afternoon breaks... avoid interrupting work activities.
- Give value to extra work activities by reserving the right space/time for them and abandoning laziness :)