Working from home: operation rules for businesses

The current safety regulations in connection with the corona virus require that all companies ensure a higher rate of employees work from home. Give your employees specific rules for working from home and adjust some of your internal procedures. How exactly can you do this?

Working from Home Is Recommended for:

Working from home is recommended for those employees who carry out independent intellectual work using the computer, possibly also the internet and certain cloud services.

If the employee carries out manual labor, or does not have a quiet home environment, working from home is not suitable for them.

Rules for Working from Home for Employees

• Create an environment you will be using for working only. Be aware of your surroundings – when you’re on the phone or a video conference, you and everyone else could be overheard.
• Try to stick to your regular work routine, avoid distractions.
• Plan your tasks – make a basic plan for the week and detailed plans for the following day. Share/consult/create this plan with your manager.
• Be available to your coworkers and your customers; make use of instant messaging and video conferencing.
• When video conferencing or chatting, be aware of who is on and whether you are sharing sensitive information.
• At the end of each day, write down what you had been working on and what you had finished; share this information with your manager or the whole team, if it affects them. Make use of time tracking tools.
• Share documents in cloud storage so they can be accessed by your coworkers who also need them for their work.

Rules for Working from Home for Managers

• Organize a short video conference with each of your subordinates working from home every morning. Walk through what they had been doing the previous day and agree on a plan for the day ahead. If it’s not possible, keep track of all your subordinates’ work plans and amend these as needed. Require each employee to submit a daily report.
• If needed, hold short all hands’ meetings via video conferencing. Keep yourself informed about the goings-on in the team and walk through the team’s results on an ongoing basis.

Rules for Employees Working from the Office

Employees not working from home during the pandemic should follow recommended rules of hygiene, as well as these additional rules:

• If possible, travel by car or bike and not by public transport.
• Keep a safe distance from your surroundings; the recommended distance is 2-4 meters. Try to use large rooms (spread out as much as possible).
• Don’t shake hands, greet each other by waving.
• Hold virtual meetings (video conferencing, instant messaging), minimize contact in person.
• Meetings which cannot be moved online should be as short as possible and with as few participants as possible.
• Air out rooms as much as you can.
• Use of disinfectants is mandatory; keep it at the entrance to the office.
• Regularly disinfect surfaces touched by multiple people (door handles etc.)

Also read our guide to choosing software tools.