Staying focused on work responsibilities and participating in virtual meetings while at home don’t have to be complicated. Whether you have a setup workstation in the bedroom or a cozy one on your couch, here’s five pro-tips to make working from home work for you and your teammates!
Start conversations with friendly questions
For virtual meetings and conference calls on Hangouts Meet, it is important to get the ball rolling by building rapport and getting to know teammates just as how you converse in the office. Check up on them from time-to-time to help them cope with the month-long quarantine.
Show support virtually
Some engagement signals are lost or limited when working together virtually, particularly when given the option to mute the microphone or focus on the laptop. Just like in the workplace, phones must be facing down when doing conference calls and showing active listening by making eye contact or expressing reactions noticeably.
Let everyone’s voice be heard
Make it easy for them by creating a space for them to speak up. Open the floor for questions and ask input from the most isolated meeting participants to let them know that their opinions are valid and welcome.
Set team norms and policies
For a work from home set up to be successful, rules and norms must be set in place to ensure that the team works effectively together. Encourage team members to create communication policies and guidelines such as answering an email within thirty minutes or responding to chats within fifteen minutes.
Get together virtually for casual conversations
Keep the team’s mental wellbeing in mind by arranging catch-up meetings with no other agenda over video chat. Veronica Gilrane, manager of Google’s People Innovation Lab, shares, “Being able to see someone’s face is not the same as being in person, but it really helps a lot. You can read their emotions. You can see how they’re doing.”
To learn more on how to make work from home, work for you, visit this blog.
About
Google
Google’s
mission is to organize the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms
like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome and YouTube,
Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of
people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the
world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet, Inc.
