How to be more productive while working from remotely (work from home)?

22 Mar How to be more productive while working from remotely (work from home)?

How to be more productive while working from remotely (work from home)?

Be more productive with the help of Microsoft Teams

We are all going through a difficult situation which is created by Coronavirus (COVID 19), and our organizations, as well as administration bodies, are supporting us during these extraordinary times. They also permitted us to work from home so that the Novel Coronavirus spreading chain will break and eventually will effectively fight Coronavirus attack. Enjoyable

With said that, let’s get started to be learning, how we can be more productive while working from home. Since we are working from home and the environment is different compare to the office environment, you may have limited resources in terms of logistics, devices, facilities, technology, and so on. When I say limited resources, I am emphasizing tools and facilities; it includes a conference room, audio/visual devices, desk phone, mechanical desk, high-speed network, a wired network which is a more reliable) system, and so on.

The rest of the article is constructed based on the available resources, using these resources on how you can be more productive and beneficial to yourself, your team, and eventually, your organization.

Let me call out things that’s most of us have at home, I am sure that everyone has the company provided laptop/desktop, personal computer, internet service, and mobile device. That’s all we need to be more productive, but the million-dollar question is how…? That’s where this article comes handy.

First, see how any organization can be successful when a number of people come together to work for the common goal and objective that make the team successful and, ultimately, the organization. So teamwork is essential for individual, group, and organization success.

Here is a list of things you can do to be more productive while working from home.

1. If you are the first time working from home then, you may feel isolated, and that is entirely normal; hence don’t overthink, first get used to with the environment, and then prioritize your tasks.
   1. Start with straightforward tasks, for example, check and respond to emails, check project status, once you get comfortable, then start with high priority duties.
2. While working from home, we usually end up doing more work than from the office as we start early and keep doing work without a break until sunset. I would recommend taking frequent breaks such, drink water, walk around, talk to a spouse (be careful while talking spouse you may get backfire 😊), etc.
3. Start your day early so that you will have enough time to complete your day-to-day work task without rushing.
4. Utilize this work from home duration as an opportunity to work on personal development, pending tasks, certification, training, and, most important, for family bonding, etc.
5. You may see network congestion plus connectivity issues when many people accessing the wireless network, I recommend bringing your laptop or device near to WiFi adaptor may help.
6. Frequently communicate with your team members and managers regarding ongoing work. Without team collaboration and communication, you will not know how and what they are working. Use Microsoft Teams for team collaboration and communication, as it is providing you chat-based workspace.
   1. Using Microsoft Teams, you will be able to communicate through; Audio, video call, real-time chat (conversation), sharing documents with your peers, and host interactive meetings. So, using Teams, you will be in touch with your team members even when they are working remotely.
   2. Microsoft Office 365 applications are also integrated with Teams, applications such as Microsoft Office, Word Excel, PowerPoint, Planner, OneNote, Outlook and Microsoft SharePoint are collaborated to pull together work tools and resources. So you will not only be communicating but also be collaborating with your team, which be helpful for you to complete your work tasks efficiently and timely.
7. Most of us have kids; therefore, you have to prepare yourself to get distracted (no one has exempted hence don’t be annoyed), spend some time with them, and make them calm down. Technology can also help you, let’s say you are in an audio/video meeting using Team and your kids running in the background or your background is messy, use Teams blur background feature which makes your background blur that way you will not expose background things in the video call.

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9. Most of the things that I mentioned include Microsoft Teams as a unified communication and collaboration tool that aids, but what about if your organization or group does not have Microsoft Teams subscription. Don’t worry! Microsoft does help the community in this challenging time by providing free Microsoft Teams offering. 😊 But how? Follow below steps
   1. If your organization using Microsoft Office 365, then Teams is already, you can simply log in to https://teams.microsoft.com using your Office 365 credential and start using Teams and guide your colleague as well.
   2. If you are not using Office 365, then visit this link (https://products.office.com/en-us/microsoft-teams/group-chat-software?) and sign-up with your organization email address, and you will be logged in to the product and automatically receives a free license of Teams that valid through January 2021. This Teams free license includes audio/video meetings up to 250 participant and live events (one to many formats) for up to 10000 attendees, meeting recording, and desktop sharing along with full collaboration.

If you are IT admin and want to know about how you can enable your user’s with Teams offering then refer this Microsoft official article https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-exploratory

You have any questions or comments, then write in the comment section.

Thank you.