The Coronavirus pandemic has forced thousands of parents all over the world to move their offices to their homes. If it’s something that you are not used to doing, working from home takes some adjustment – especially if you have children.
We’ve put some tips together to help those of you struggling to give both your work and children the necessary attention to help you strike the right balance.
Have a Clear A Schedule
Routine is vital. In our experience, kids are better behaved when they know what to expect. Make sure you have a schedule and let your children know when you need them to have some quiet time or when you are free to do something with them. Communication is key, so make sure you keep everyone in the loop with yours and their daily schedule – communicate about your availability and stick to your commitments, especially with children.
Keep Them Busy
We all know that when kids get bored, they will let you know about it. If you need to be able to work efficiently, it’s important that you can keep your children entertained with little supervision for as long as possible.
Try to arrange any important calls during nap time or use healthy amounts of screen time to your advantage (there are plenty of educational programmes, even for really little ones). If your children are older, make sure they have plenty of books they can enjoy on their own or encourage them to play outside and get some exercise.
Make sure you have a list of activities for them and put them into a schedule so you don’t have to break from work to think of something for them to do.
Use snacks to your advantage, a healthy snack can keep a child quiet for ten minutes while you get something important done.
Separate Home and Work
Having proper separation between the role of parent and businessperson is important. If you don’t make a conscious effort to separate the two, it is likely that you will never feel like you are doing either particularly well.
Start by creating a physical separation. Setting up a designated work area in your home will help separate home and work mentally and help you focus on your work. Much like when you go to the office, having a designated area helps to get you in “work” mode. Having that separation will not only help you focus, but it will also help you to switch off at the end of the day and get yourself into family mode.
Manage Expectations
Having realistic goals is important when working from home. It’s not always easy to work efficiently and when you have kids at home it’s even harder. Work with your manager or employees to set realistic goals and flexible deadlines. Flexible working hours can also help to strike the right balance.
Check in with teams regularly to keep everyone up-to-date with everything that’s going on. Communication is key, these are trying times and if you are unable to meet your targets, speak to your manager and find a suitable solution.
Have the Right Tools
As we have mentioned a few times, communication is vital during these unprecedented times. Having the right tools in place will mean that employees and business owners will be able to communicate effectively.
Many of us have had to adapt to remote working very quickly and, for most, this means we have had to throw together some sort of short term communication strategy to keep us going. Although some are now starting to return to their usual place of business, many are still encouraged to work from home and we can’t see this changing anytime soon.
Therefore, it’s important to review communication strategies and put a more permanent communications system in place. After all, a good communications platform is not only essential for remote working, but it can also benefit your business long term.
Investing in communications technology ensures that your teams and colleagues can continue to communicate, collaborate and operate effectively. A cloud telephony system can help employees communicate and collaborate from wherever they are. Whether they are in the office, at home or in the field they will have access to all the information they need to communicate effectively and get the job done, including having access to video conferencing, voice calls, instant messaging services and more, all from one piece of software.
Hosted telephony and collaboration tools are cost-effective for any business, regardless of its size. They provide a flexible and scalable solution for businesses with a small handful of employees to thousands of employees.
Find out more about how a hosted telephony system can help support remote and flexible working and If you’re still not convinced, we’ve put together six signs that it’s time to upgrade your communications system.
Kane Can Help
Kane Communications are here to help. We provide free, impartial advice, every step of the way to help you find the best solution and can deliver the perfect cloud-based telephony and collaboration system with all the features necessary to aid remote and flexible working.
Many of the systems we offer can be deployed remotely. This means we can get you up and running quickly without needing to meet face-to-face or come into direct contact with anyone.
We understand that no two businesses are the same and use our knowledge and experience to deliver secure and reliable phone systems to help you provide your customers with an experience that is second to none, even when your circumstances can change in an instant.
Please feel free to drop us a line to discuss your needs in more detail.
