The past week I have gotten so many great tips on what happens when we’re all remote workers/first time remote working/working with that crisis feeling. I’ve participated in super detailed Zoom sessions, read some extremely timely articles, people’s new policies, lots of emails and listened to some pretty in pain people on the phone. Here’s what we found with a week or more of remote work under our belts (and since this is a rolling issue, unfolding as I type, there will be more issues discovered next week):

Biggest Problems Discovered

Stress is high - remote work when you never did it, remote work when you’re not good at it, remote work with your children home, coronavirus health scare, shelter-in-place loneliness/loss of control, overloaded work, shall I go on?. All this causing less or no exercise (a major way to control stress). Poor internet at home for many staff - because of rural area, low data plan, no data plan.

Home computers, computer cameras, phones and lack of check scanners and professional printers - these may not support the level of connectedness of team apps, financial software, professional communications, access to company server, and security required for company data, privacy issues, merchant services, banking, etc

Lack of methods for records retention procedure, backup of computers at home, Help Desk/IT overloaded

Children at home - jokes on FB not-withstanding, this is a serious adjustment for everyone to be together 24/7, and at a time that we need a quiet workspace (w/internet bandwidth that’s not being used up by our at-home children playing games or going to school)

People missing their events (sports, choir, church - some online but not the same) - this is a two-fold problem: 1. being told only what they can’t do (go to in-person things like: church, sports, restaurants, stores, salon), 2. the good feeling/the life-giving feeling they get from that event is now not accessible (refer back to first point above STRESS)

Here’s what we heard people doing about these issues (and as resourceful people there’ll be even more ideas next week!):

Fast Solutions Applied

Use the Control Inventory (created by Barbara Glanz) - in an online Lunch and Learn to help people see what they do have control over, what they’re losing/missing, what cool thing they have instead, and what they have to let go of in order to fully get the “what cool thing they have instead”

Free Wellness Resources - a few online resources that are either always free or have been offered because of this crisis: Wellbeats.com, Headspace.com, Calm.com

What Free Resources have you used? - tell us in the Comments

Remote Work Tip of the Day - staff person emailing every morning (email us and we’ll send you a list you can use to send your own)

SOPs, job descriptions, file organizing - some staff (ex - those with in-person customer interaction) don’t have enough to do. Having time on your hands only increases the time thinking about the situation, the fear, the uncertainty. Now’s the time to help them learn to and then write/update SOPs for their tasks, update this job description, organize online files.

Weekly or Daily Contests - cutest co-worker (pet, child) picture, funniest thing a child did, daily walking or other fitness challenges

Pictures of some remote work activity (funny or inspirational) - share in team app, employee portal, email list (my example is the above picture of an online choir practice)

Policies and Procedures relating to Remote Work, new laws (Families First Coronavirus Response Act) - HR staff are overloaded so have a former HR staff person write or a consultant

Impactfully upping Leadership skills - the book on George W Bush’s leadership, though written in the aftermath of Sept 11th, is super timely today. The leadership he provided in that crisis caused our economy to keep going, caused people to work together (for awhile – we are humans so it didn’t last forever), caused people to see our government as take-charge, helpful and compassionate. The coronovirus, and all that surrounds it, isn’t causing so much of this. It’s all about leadership. Get to-the-point, immediately implementable ideas from the book (or leadership training). The Leadership Genius of George W Bush

Come back tomorrow for the next installment - Remote Work Training While We’re Already Working Remotely!

We’re busy culling the masses of materials we have to help staff learn, and supervisors learn how to help their staff work remotely successfully