4 Work From Home (WFH) Tips for a Successful & Productive Business

Work from home is one solution to prevent the acceleration of the transmission of Covid-19 disease, while still being able to run a business. How to work with this model is actually not difficult to do, even very helpful to provide work life balance to employees, while keeping the company productive.

Risks and Challenges of Implementing Work From Home

Actually, before the Corona Virus outbreak broke out, work from home had already been offered by most employers to their employees, especially at startup companies. But for some businesses, this policy is still relatively new. Some companies might be able to adapt quickly to this changing work pattern, but most still find it difficult. Following are the risks and challenges of implementing work from home:

Difficult to Communicate

When working from home, what happens is that face-to-face interaction is lost. The company is also afraid that this can cause difficulties in communicating. In fact, there are various ways out when face-to-face interaction is lost. For example with video calls and conference calls. It’s just that, not all employees are comfortable in this way. This relates to work culture. The computer screen that accompanies you is indeed very different from the hustle and bustle when holding meetings in the office with the presence of the whole team everyday.

Difficult to Monitor Employee Performance

Another consideration the company is reluctant to implement work from home is the difficulty of monitoring employee performance. They are of the view that employee performance is easier to monitor when working in an office. Another reason heavy companies impose work from home is the difficulty of distributing tasks to employees. With a fully virtual presence, it is more difficult to establish work ties that encourage accountability.

Reduced Productivity

Implementing work from home also risks reducing employee productivity. The reason is that there is no direct supervision from the company. The company might assume that employees are just busy playing games, watching movies, and even going out to have fun during work hours. This is feared to reduce work productivity. Not to mention there is an assumption, work that should be able to be completed in 1 hour at the office can actually take up to 5 hours when done from home.

Tips for Keeping Employees Productive while Working from Home Doing work from home is actually not difficult for companies to do if they understand the principles. Here are 4 tips that companies can do to keep employees productive while working from home:

Ensure Communication Channels Are Available and Current

When implementing work from home, you must keep in touch, especially with work partners. For that, make sure all communication channels such as Whatsapp, Telegram, or Slack are always on standby. Don’t get an answer when your office friend needs you. If necessary, you can make a video call or conference call using tools such as Zoom, Skype, or Google Meeting. Ensuring the availability of communication channels is the main thing that everyone must fulfill when doing work from home.

In addition, the delivery of information must also be fast and on target. You can use communication channels such as social messaging or internal applications that you use in the office. If you use Talents, you can use features like Broadcast Message to do this.

Ensure Employee Attendance is Controlled

As an HR, you must ensure that employee attendance is controlled despite implementing work from home. One way is to use the Human Resources Information System (HRIS) application that has a mobile attendance feature such as Talent. The mobile attendance feature or Live Attendance can help HR like you to directly monitor the attendance of employees who work from home. The principle is through check-in and check-out which can be done directly from the employee’s cellphone. Every time employees work, they can check-in. So even after finishing work, they can check-out. Live Attendance in Talents also features a selfie check-in feature. You, as HR, can see their absence through a dashboard that is updated in real-time every time employees clock-in or clock-out. That way, you can still monitor whether employees work or not.

Give Tasks to Employees Through an Integrated Platform

When the company provides a policy to work from home, the work process must continue as usual. Under these conditions, task coordination must be structured. If you use an HRIS application that has an assignment feature such as Talent, you can enforce a policy for assigning directly to employees through the application. You simply access the Task feature and assign tasks according to your direction to each team. Team members can send back completed tasks through