This article was written as a collaboration between Franchise Consultant and President of Franchise Beacon, Michael Peterson and Franchise, and attorney Mike Drumm, founder of Drumm Law. Both work from home and manage a team of remote employees. This is a shortened version, the full article is here.
This article came from a conversation where we realized we had something to share of significant benefit. Here’s the short version:
- Get out of your bedroom. You need to get out of the bedroom (or off the couch) now and get dressed.
- Set up a workstation. Hopefully you have a desk at home. If not, find something else like an unused kitchen table. Worst case, as of this writing there are 3 desks for under $50 on Amazon Prime with overnight delivery. Seriously, get a desk. And an office chair.
- Setup a work area. The most important part of the work area is a door that closes. A physical barrier that is where you go to “work”. Here is what we would suggest, in order of preference, for your work area:
- A home office.
- A spare bedroom.
- A section of the garage
If you can’t make any of these work, grab a nook in the house.
- People should only know you are working from home if you tell them. Turn off the T.V., make sure the dog is not barking in the background, no kids running in and out of your office.
- Communicate with your spouse, kids, or roommates that this is work time. Door locks are also very helpful if you have smaller children that don’t understand the “work from home” concept.
- Separate work time and home time. This follows #4 above. Normally, your family (and your body and mind) know you are at work because. . . well you are at work. Make sure both your family/friends/roommates know, and most importantly make sure that you know, when you are “at work” and “at home”.
- Take your breaks. Get up, go outside but maintain “social distance”, even just look out the window; keeping your “schedule” will help you acclimatize to your new “office “much faster.
- Keep your meeting schedules. Your company, by now, has probably produced and disseminated a “pandemic policy”. That does not in any way mean you need to stop business as usual. If you have a management meeting on Tuesdays at 1pm, have your management meeting on Tuesdays at 1pm, just do it via video conference.
- Understand the business risks. Companies and individuals should be following the recommendations handed down from employers and the appropriate health authorities. Supporting an idea, however, requires that you also understand the downsides of that idea. Steve Jobs famously said, “Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions”. Researchers at the University of California use a demonstration of a 24-second, 4-word exchange between a pilot and a co-pilot regarding a (simulated) fuel loss to underscore this point; the somewhat unquantifiable but also undeniable benefits of physical proximity in the work environment. Plan for these business risks by encouraging people to keep an Instant Message Service (business only) open, pick up a phone to ask a quick question instead of sending an email, and basically adopt practices that are counter to what we think of as office efficiencies.
- Stay away from the fridge! Keep your normal meal schedules, or even better implement intermittent fasting. If you are going to change your diet make sure you make it healthier, not more junk-laden.
We are facing a serious situation, and there is a plethora of information out there about how to stay safe, what to do in case of exposure, and how businesses should react to this pandemic. What seemed to be missing, however, was the “how” for folks that don’t work from home on a daily basis. These are our ideas. What are yours?