10 Helpful Tips For Work From Home

Perhaps all corporate and business professionals have a dream of working from home. Working from home could be cool and less effort-consuming; however, in reality, it could be very awful and hard to manage with your daily life.

Without proper planning and experience in WFH, you would not be able to manage and enhance your productivity. In today’s article, we are about to disclose some very useful tips to enhance your productivity while working from home. 

Best Tips for Work From Home

1. Request for Appropriate Prerequisite

Before starting your work from home, make sure that you have all the prerequisite amenities available in your home. Otherwise, ask for it from your employer or organization.

However, there is no assurance of getting all the requested pieces of equipment from the organization, especially if it is a temporary WFH. To set up your working environment, you will need the below-mentioned equipment:

1. Laptop or Computer
2. If it is a Computer, then you need a Webcam
3. One Optical Mouse and Keyboard (Wireless)
4. Multiport USB connecter
5. Printer (Optional)
6. Any kind of professional software as per the work.

You can ask for anything relevant to enhance work efficiency. However, you cannot expect to get all of the amenities that you asked for. Besides, there are some organizations that equip their employees with all the necessary pieces of equipment before a temporary WFH service. 

2. Organize a Proper Work Environment

To establish a WFH environment, you need to find a suitable space for this in your home. A comfortable position on the beanbag might rapidly snatch your comfort. Thus, you need to settle a fixed position in your home where you can keep your files and accessories without any family member’s intervention.

The place you choose for your work-from-home purpose must be very quiet and out of the reach of your television or any other sound system. Your workplace also must have an ample amount of power connectors. Make sure that the room you choose has a door; otherwise, you have to face many challenges to isolate yourself from your family and their interference.   

3. Facilitate your Working Space

If your WFH is temporary like for some days or even if it is for some weeks, then you might not want to invest a lot in decorating your workstation. Thereby, you have to have a proper idea of the essential amenities required to decorate a proper working environment. 

1. First, you need a comfortable seating arrangement like a proper office chair.
2. A good and well-forged desktop computer so that you can easily handle all the necessary applications without any major time loss or system failure. 
3. For the matter of video conferencing, you will need good and proper headphones with a microphone attached.
4. For the matter of WFH, you can have an extra monitor to enhance the speed of your work.
5. There are some other types of equipment also which could make your work from home easier like an additional computer, iPad, voice command devices, etc.

On the above-mentioned list, maybe you can find some equipment useless, or you can also find this list incomplete, however, as per your work type, it is you who have to make a proper list of must-have equipment.

4. Double Check Internet Speed and Stability

The most essential thing you require for working from home is an internet connection. Without this, the entire setup of Work-From-Home is futile. However, even if you have internet connectivity on your home premises, you must double-check the stability of the connection.

Office works require stable and faster connectivity to the internet so that you can perform seamless video conferencing to data transferring within the blink of an eye. Check the uploading and downloading speed of the internet; if it is not sufficient, then you can ask your internet service provider to boost your internet speed for a temporary stretch.

Another essential you should have before starting WFH is good Wi-Fi coverage across the room you choose. Without proper Wi-Fi coverage, you won’t be able to perform multitasking seamlessly. However, for the period of WFH, you can also install a dedicated lease connection in your home if you feel so.

5. Setting Expectations for Yourself and Others

There is a visible gap between the WFH environment and your office environment for some obvious reasons. You cannot expect the same level of work efficiency from both places.

You also would not be able to access every required resource from the temporary working environment. Thus, you must communicate to your supervisor and other related persons to your work concerning the potential setback. 

Further, you must set an expectation level from your work and from your family members while you are occupying their space of freedom. Otherwise, arranging your day-to-day assignments could be very frustrating and make you agitated. 

6. Time Management and Scheduling Your Work

Working from home could be fatal if you are bad at time management. Family, television, the backyard, and the absence of a supervisor could easily digress your attention and cause a huge amount of time wastage. Thereby, you must have proper planning and the potential to differentiate a finished and scheduled work. 

If you want, then you can also use a to-do list or any other task management application to track the difference between your assigned and finished work. Make a calendar of events and then analyze it after finishing the entire working hour to learn from the deficits of your working capacity. 

7. Set a Standard Protocol for Video Conferencing

Inevitably, you have to arrange every video conference from home if you are working from home. Thus, you have to maintain some best practices while attaining any video conference using any home video conferencing software like Skype, Zoom, GoToMeeting, etc.

1. First, turn on the webcam. Sometimes, turning on the camera and listening to others might be sufficient. Unless and until it’s an interactive conference, your physical appearance is the only matter of concern.
2. Frequently mute the mic. Try to mute the microphone while video conferencing until you do not have to take any part in the conversation. This best practice will make your subordinates comfortable because background noise could be very disturbing during a conference. 
3. Set proper and sufficient light: Without ample light, your teammates would not be able to see you properly, and this could annoy them if it is a serious conference. 
4. Use a nice background: Keep a nice and clean background just to give them a professional feeling. This practice is very much essential when conferencing with a client. 
5. Don’t forget to wear formal: Do not ruin your professional image of yourself by wearing casual. Cool is not great for every circumstance. It is obvious to maintain proper dressing even if you are working from home.

8. Try to Eradicate your Bad Habits

Many kinds of research prove that you can waste 2 hours and 22 minutes every day monitoring multiple social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, etc. Thus you have to avoid all of them while working from home because of this habit; you could lose many precious hours of work.

9 Keep Yourself Connected with Your Teammates

When you work at your original office space, you do not take frequent breaks to connect with your team or co-workers. However, while WFH, you have to take frequent breaks from your work to connect and share information with them.

However, in the era of innovative technology, you do not have to worry about losing extra time. You can simply use some messaging systems to create a virtual group among your office co-workers to stay connected throughout the day. 

Do not stop collaborating while working from home! You have to rely on the strength of your co-workers, even if you are doing work from home. You can use some collaboration applications if you require but always keep stable connectivity with them to finish your work seamlessly.  

10 Last but not Least: Improve your Resilience

The resilience of an employee is the utmost factor while working from home. You will find yourself in the heart of the distraction, but you have to take everything positively to continue the process. Have confidence that you can do it!

You will find your pets in front of the web camera while conferencing, the unwanted noise of streets, the delivery boy knocking on the door, yelling at family members, especially kids, and many other kinds of embarrassing moments you will have to face surely. Nevertheless, do not worry, because this is no surprise if you are WFH. 

Best Work From Home Tips to Enhance Productivity

In the above-mentioned article, we have disclosed all the factors related to working from home. However, you can have a little different experience as per your area of work. WFH could be fun if you can manage your punctuality and perseverance throughout the working hours. Otherwise, it could be a horrible dream that you never want to face again in your life.