{"id":6923,"date":"2020-06-18T01:20:02","date_gmt":"2020-06-18T06:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/?p=6923"},"modified":"2023-07-23T11:01:49","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T16:01:49","slug":"how-have-businesses-coped-with-remote-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/how-have-businesses-coped-with-remote-working\/","title":{"rendered":"How Have Businesses Coped with Remote Working?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The novel coronavirus has impacted our personal and professional lives in profound ways \u2013 and just about everyone in the world has been effected. Among the biggest challenges for businesses is the need to keep everyone apart from one another. On March 23rd<\/sup>, Boris Johnson announced the lockdown with the words \u2018you must stay at home\u2019, forcing businesses across the country to allow their employees to work from home.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s position has now relaxed to \u2018work from home if you can\u2019, and many cabinet ministers are allegedly agitating for further loosening<\/a>. But given that so many businesses have already made the switch to allow their employees to do this, not a great deal has changed. In fact, some of the results of this vast and unprecedented experiment in remote working might actually be positive \u2013 and therefore likely to continue even after the lockdown has lifted.<\/p>\n

So exactly what steps have businesses taken to aid the transition to remote working?<\/p>\n

Video Conferencing<\/h2>\n

Services like Zoom<\/a> and Microsoft Teams<\/a> have, over the past few months, gotten sudden mainstream traction. While there\u2019s a place for phone calls, there\u2019s no real substitute for a sit-down meeting for everyone to get their points of view across. For many businesses, Microsoft\u2019s Teams is the preferred option for\u00a0video conferencing<\/a>, as it is a part of the company\u2019s \u2018Office\u2019 family of programs, and thus can be integrated more easily into existing workflows. While there have been some concerns expressed about the security of some of these platforms, they have filled a crucial gap, and have contributed enormously to the continued productivity of businesses across the world.<\/p>\n

Bonding<\/h2>\n

Working together doesn\u2019t just mean sharing documents and participating in conference calls. There\u2019s also an element of social interaction that helps any team to effectively cohere. This is another area where teleconferencing can prove exceptionally valuable, as it allows for team-building games to be played. You might construct your own quiz<\/a>, or you might set a series of arts and crafts challenges, or start a communal bake-off. There\u2019s a great deal of fun to be had online, and it\u2019ll help you to check in to see how everyone is doing.<\/p>\n

An important fixture of many workplace\u2019s social environment is a morning break for tea or coffee. You can simulate this online, and thereby help everyone to stick to the same working day. Parcel2Go<\/a>\u2019s head of operations, Phil Woodbridge, stresses the importance of \u201ctaking time out to do something different such as Pictionary, ice breakers, and fun facts. Making sure that people know we are there but to also give them time to themselves \u2013 we are all in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t mention the C word<\/h2>\n

The Covid-19 situation being a source of continued stress for so many of us, many employers have gone so far as to set up an informal ban on mention of the word \u2018coronavirus\u2019 during social interactions. Of course, mention of the topic might be unavoidable, particular if some aspect of your work has been influenced by it. But if you want to create an online space that\u2019s free from the word, it\u2019ll probably be a good thing for your employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The novel coronavirus has impacted our personal and professional lives in profound ways \u2013 and just about everyone in the world has been effected. Among the biggest challenges for businesses is the need to keep everyone apart from one another. On March 23rd, Boris Johnson announced the lockdown with the words \u2018you must stay at… How Have Businesses Coped with Remote Working?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":6924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6923"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12899,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6923\/revisions\/12899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flevy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}