COVID-19 has increased the number of people working from home. It becomes a sudden shift for people and requires them to quickly adapting to the changes.
In some companies, working from home will be implemented even until post-pandemic. Thus, employees should keep their performance stable, even though they are struggling to adapt.
There are various challenges for the employees when they are working from home. The lack of facilities in their home, for example. Or the change of the working atmosphere. In some cases, they are also struggling with domestic issues.
These counter-productive issues are influencing their performance. These are some tools and services to improve performance when working from home.
Coordination Strategy
When the employees spread as they are working remotely, coordination among the teams is crucial.
Working from the office will help the employees to supervise the team’s progress directly. But even when they work from the office, miscoordination could happen. Therefore, working from home can make miscoordination among the employees becomes worse.
Project management tools will help the team to improve their performance and keeping them organized. There are available applications or websites online, namely Google Suite, Trello, Asana, etc. Some of those tools are free to use.
The tools will help the employees to keep on track of their team’s tasks. Aside from needing the tools to improve their ability in supervising the team, file sharing sites or applications will help the employees. It is because sending their updates through emails will make it less-organized.
Productivity tools will help to boost the employees’ coordination. Some of them allow the employer to give feedback and review on how to improve their performance.
If it is not working on improving their performance, consider other factors. Some of them might occur in their home. The changes in the environment will most likely affect their habit and productivity.
Domestic Issues.
The challenge of working from home is not only revolving in the coordination among the team. As their house becomes their office, having a peaceful home to create a comfortable working atmosphere is needed.
If their only problem is their house’s layout, it is a simple challenge to tackle. The solution is redesigning their house’s interior, as long as they have budgets to do so. Some references from Pinterest or advice from the professionals will help them create their own office to work from home.
But it is not that simple. Some people struggle to keep their focus when they work from home, especially if they have kids running around their house. Parenting is not easy. It requires advanced time management to be great at working and parenting. Therefore, work from home brings a new parenting challenge. It is because the work and life border blurred. They have to adapt their parenting strategies or their time management style. If they can’t adapt to the change, it will create a situation that might inflict emotion.
The stress from parenting and tension from their work will challenge their self-control. Pandemic anxiety and economic issues will fuel their condition. Uncontrolled emotions will lead to conflicts with their significant other or causing damage to their domestic life. It creates a stressful atmosphere and burning out their energy. The tension will influence their working performance and, in most cases, reducing their productivity.
Domestic issues are complex issues. Sometimes, proper communication among the family can solve them. A heart to heart conversation will help them to come up with solutions. But not everyone can have proper communication. Finding suitable solutions for everyone is a hard thing to do. It is because there are conflicts of interest.
Handling domestic issues require a clear head, and sometimes with the help from a neutral third-party. They will become a helpful mediator. There are various ways to find the mediator for domestic issues. Professional family counseling services is one of the services that will help them overcome that challenge.
Family counseling is different than any other counseling services. It is suitable for domestic issues as they are specialized and licensed in handling family or marriage problems. Handling those issues in the hand of professionals might help them to improve their domestic life.
Fixing domestic issues require time. But the long-term result will worth the time. It will lead them to a comfortable atmosphere to work from home even after the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Overcoming Struggles
There are various struggles of working from home. Maybe it is because of the coordination among the employees or the domestic issues in their house. Or worse, the problems caused by both.
Identifying the issues will help the employees to come out with a proper solution. The company can provide some of the ways out. But other solutions require the employees to seek help from professionals. How are you going to solve your struggle?
