Work from home is more and more popular each day, and not just for working nomads or adventurous youngsters. Remote jobs make it possible for people to try and find a good life-work balance, being able to save time they would otherwise use for commuting, as well as work from home or on the go. Combined with flexible or partially flexible working time, remote work really gives a lot of freedom and there are a lot of other advantages of working remotely both for businesses and for people.
However, there’s a lot of challenges when it comes to this type of work as well. How can you effectively manage remote employees? How can you be productive from home? What are good remote working tools? What are best practices for virtual teams? Are there any fun activities for remote employees? These are just some of the questions that you need to answer for a good remote experience.
For some of these questions, we tried to find an answer. For instance, we wrote about 5 tips for managing remote teams, as well as about 5 tricks to be more effective when working from home.
In this blog, we want to focus on how not to waste any time on remote projects, or even better – how to use the time you have in the best way.
Here are 4 cures for time wasting!
#1 Try to Consolidate Workflows and Procedures
It’s likely that you have various daily tasks to work with – blogs and wikis, emails, document sharing, content, time tracking… And being a remote worker doesn’t make it easier, with no IT guys down the hall to save the day when a problem arises. This is why consolidating different workflows and procedures – both when it comes directly to your tasks and to maintaining your computer – is really helpful.
#2 Try to Have Enough “Face time”
Just because your teammates are in different cities or countries and you’re not sitting at the same office doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have regular, face-to-face meeting. Skype and similar software can help you have productive meetings wherever you are. This is great both for productivity and for the team spirit, and working collaboratively with colleagues is always easier with a bit of face-to-face interaction.
#3 Set Clear Priorities
If you know exactly what the priorities are, it is less likely you’ll be beating around the bush and waste your time. It’s always important to know what your goals are, and what the steps you need to take.
#4 Don’t Be Afraid of Technology
Online collaboration tools like CollaboraZon can boost your productivity and help your team work smarter. CollaboraZon lets you share documents, exchange messages, comment and create events all in one place, which makes it super easy to work on different projects and collaborate naturally with all your colleagues or clients wherever they are. Try it out for yourself and see if it helps – register now and get a free trial!