What could be stranger that finding a significant portion your staff suddenly remote? In the rough and ready days of early remote work, e-mail and wait was not uncommon. Those days are long gone, as remote staffing tools have become quite sophisticated in recent years. If quarantine conditions have your staff working from home unexpectedly, here are some ideas for keeping your business on track while we wait for good news.
Conference Apps to Get the Crew Together
By now, most employers have either temporarily suspended operations, or have reduced in-office staff to accommodate social distancing. And while this is certainly the best choice for overall health, it can leave our daily business operations feeling too much in limbo. The latest generation of remote conferencing apps have changed the game from the old-school videoconferences, with their hiccupping pictures and dragging audio.
With common platforms like Zoom, GoTo Meeting and WebEx you can always use the basic conferencing features. But the platforms also allow for webinars. So, if a large group needs to be brought up to date about your current situation, plans, etc., you have the ability to host a large “town hall” style meeting.
Remote “Office Drop-ins”
So many projects seem to rely on the office drop-in to get through the inevitable sticking points. When the offices may be miles apart, digital drop-ins are the solution. Slack offers the opportunity to create “channels” that allow teams to communicate as a whole group and as subgroups for the kind of quick and effective “drop in” alerts and comments that keep projects on track when everyone is in the same location.
Notes and Do-lists
One downfall of messaging apps is that it can lead to ideas getting “scrolled away” or lost when comment volume is high. A project plan-list solution, like Trello or ClickUp, might offer your team a better way to manage the wide variety of information pieces that accumulate around a project. As with most of the new remote office software, they are mobile-friendly, so however your staff can log in, they can keep on top of things.
Some companies are built and hire for remote work, but for teams having to work remotely temporarily, it can present a challenge. While your staff is out of the office, their work is largely digital, so your solutions can be, too. Triple Helix has spent the last fifteen years building expertise in making our clients’ real-time data accessible and available to remote staff. If we can be of assistance to keep you up and running, contact us for a no-obligation consultation.
