In the recent outbreak of COVID 19, many companies have asked their employees to work from home or have reduced their onsite manpower to around 10% of the total size to avoid the spread of the virus.
Work From Home still seems to be a farfetched idea to many especially those companies whose management is a bit old school and believed that work can be done only at the office, they fear that allowing employees to work from home would promote lethargies and would affect productivity and lead to a loss in control.
Today we are going to understand different methods and ways in which an employer can implement to make work from home a productive and cost-effective way of working.
1. Online Communication
In today’s advanced technology world, connecting to people from all parts of the globe is quite easy, so if an employee is working from home his supervisor or boss can be in touch with him or her through different online meeting platforms link hangouts, zoom, skype for business, etc.
These platforms have the option of sharing the screens and running presentations and add up to 100 users on the call which can help a company in ways that were not possible before.
2. Flexible hours
Employers can provide their teammates with an option to work in flexible hours, this can offer a major improvement in a person’s productivity. Some companies offer this option to their employees through which a person can work in flexible hours.
These flexible hours give the employee an option to work their shift according to their preference.
Suppose there is a female employee who can work from morning 10 to 12 but is not available between 12 to 2 PM which is called a “blackout period”, the employee will not be disturbed by anyone and she is allowed to spend time with her family.
This will give the employee satisfaction that she is maintaining her work and life balance and also improves her morale, this can do wonders if implemented correctly and employees will go out of their way and may give more than the assigned time to get the work done.
3. Providing necessary equipment
Employers can ensure that all the employees working from home have office-issued workstations (laptops or desktops), and also ensure that they are secured enough to avoid any integrity issues.
Instead of having local servers’ companies can opt for cloud servers to store data so that anyone with the credentials can have access to the data from anywhere.
Proper connectivity to the internet is also a prerequisite as most people working from home have to be online for work.
4. Online Sales Platforms or tools
Employers can adapt to different online strategies to sell their products and services online. They can prepare a pitch deck or a sales pitch video and send it across to the prospects. This method can be utilized by working from home as the salesperson sends the video and then follows up with the prospect.
There are different software in the market that allows a company to prepare its sales pitch and send it across to its prospects. One such software is Pitch Link (https://pitch.link/).
People can also find the HRMS software companies here at Procure HR.
This software can help an organization preparing a sales pitch and then sending it to the prospects, the good part of the pitch link is that it allows the customer to converse with the sales team and also invite different stakeholders to have a look at the product and finalize it.
These types of tools can certainly help an organization sell services and goods without its sales force going out on the field.
5. Training and Development through Webinars
Since most of your manpower or employees would be working from home, you can use this time to train your staff, most employers complain about their workers or employees not being efficient enough.
Well now is the time, you can ask your training team to arrange training twice a week or daily depending upon the type of training and ensure your employees upskill themselves. You can adapt the method of virtual learning or online training.
There are many software’s that provide online training platforms like Handytrain (https://handytrain.com/), these software’s help an organization to create a module and then share it with employees in different languages since they have an app as well enabling employees to download the module and learn it from wherever they want, this software provides an option for an assessment after each module which can then be used to identify the effectiveness of the training to the employees.
We at Procure HR have been working on the above model for the past 3 years and we have not faced any major issue in our way of working, and we are fully equipped to handle any kind of organization with its HR Shared Services.
The training & development services via the platform of Procure HR would be mind-boggling to avail.
Aforesaid are some of the ways through which an employer can ensure that the productivity of their employees is not hampered while working from home.
The old school needs to overcome their fear and adopt such strategies in times of outbreak like this. We are willing to help companies with the best fit model for their current requirements like setting up WFH policies, Human Resources Consulting Services, Payroll Outsourcing, KRA Built-up, online training, and development, etc.
The concept of virtual HR services and HR outsourcing companies matched effectively during this pandemic season.