Making Extended Work from Home Successful in 2021 and Beyond

Some companies and business professionals are counting the days until the pandemic relinquishes its hold on the world and they can return to working from permanent offices and workspaces. Many others, however, have concluded that remote work from home comes with its own advantages. Despite prior prognostications that worker productivity would suffer and many employees would shirk their responsibilities when working from home, most research indicates the opposite occurred when work from home became the new normal. Per one recent study, an astounding 94% of businesses indicate worker productivity either remained the same or improved over pre-COVID-19 pandemic. 

Businesses have discovered their employees want to take on more responsibilities and welcome the work-life balance that working from home offers. Indeed, 80% of workers said they do not want to return to a permanent workspace in a physical office five days a week and 40 hours a week. Over half, once it is safe to work from an office workspace, say they will continue to work from home more than they did pre-COVID-19. 

Work from Home for 2021 and Beyond

Even with a few promising vaccines on the horizons, most businesses are not planning to return to physical office space until the summer at the earliest. Others are planning to continue working from home through the end of 2021. However, a growing number are not waiting for COVID-19 to dissipate and have no plans to return to status quo. Instead, they are transforming their workspace plans—electing for hybrid workspace strategies with some employees who are remote all of the time and others who work some of the time from their home and some of the time from coworking space. Gartner predicts that 82% of businesses are going to let their employees to work remotely, at least some of the time. Google, Siemens, Facebook, Twitter, and Shopify are just a few that have plan long-term work-from-home policies.

Recommendations for Professionals Working from Home

The reality is that some professionals have excelled in the new work-from-home normal. Others have struggled. As work from home is extended well into 2021, there are a number of things that businesses can do to help ensure their workers remain productive and engaged. 

1. Set a Starting Routine

The longer it takes you to get into their early morning work routine, the greater the likelihood a professional will struggle to get into the flow of things and the morning sluggishness can wear away at your motivation. An early morning routine that works for many means getting a pot of coffee brewing and focusing 30 minutes on working through emails and new project tasks.

2. Manage Your Schedule

Understanding what you’re going to work on and when during the workday helps one to achieve key objectives and remain on task and schedule. Spending time trying to figure out what you’re going to work on for the day wastes valuable time. Solidifying your schedule the day before enables you to hit the ground running and ensures that you don’t waste valuable time and energy planning out the day’s activities. Here, it is important to block off dedicated times on your calendar for those various tasks. 

3. Coordinate with Family Members, Roommates, Others 

Many working from home find themselves competing with others in their household. Roommates and spouses also work and need workspace. Parents, siblings, and children need help with personal issues. Pets need attention and caretaking. In these scenarios, it is important to have agreements with those who share the same environment as to work hours, background noise, who is taking care of the pet (taking them out, feeding them, etc.), and other issues. Just because you’re at home doesn’t mean that you’re available and that others can play loud music or encroach upon your workspace and work focus. 

4. Pinpoint a Work-Life Balance

One of the outcomes of the new work-from-home normal is extended work hours and stress. The average workday, according to one study, grew by almost one hour each day, with the average worker logging 10.75 hours per day. Other studies reach similar conclusions. To counter his work scope creep, workers need to delineate time boundaries to separate work and personal time by starting and ending workdays at specific times. 

5. Get a Dedicated Workspace

Working from the dining room table, kitchen counter, or some other jury-rigged home office may have worked for a few weeks or a month, but these home workspace solution simply aren’t sustainable and productive. Nine months into the pandemic lockdown and with no foreseeable solution on the horizon, professionals working from home are looking for “more permanent” home workspace solutions. Three-quarters of at-home workers indicate they spend most of their days hunched over their laptops, which research shows add 10 pounds of pressure on their neck and shoulders. In addition to affecting their health, these poorly designed home workspaces impact productivity. 

6. Take Breaks

When working from home, minutes can quickly turn into hours sitting or standing at a workspace without moving or taking breaks. It may seem counterintuitive, but those who don’t take breaks actually are less productive than those who do. If they don’t have such documented, businesses need to codify a break policy for remote workers. Those working from home need to plan their breaks, block off their calendars, and communicate their schedules with their peers. Plus, a break is a break; workers need to make sure they don’t take their work with them on their breaks.   

7. Manage Your Calls and Meetings

One of the outcomes of the work-from-home normal is an explosion in meetings. There is good news when it comes to working from home: the average length of meetings decreased 20.1%—from 1 hour to a little more than 45 minutes. The bad news starts with the length of meetings; they increased 13%. The number of attendees per meeting also grew 13.5%. Thus, even though workers are logging more hours per day, this added productivity may be consumed in unproductive meeting time. 

9. Use Technology to Communicate and Collaborate

Those working from home must rely on digital technology to collaborate and communicate with their colleagues who are also working from home. There are numerous technology options such as Slack or Microsoft Teams for chat. For project management, there are a long list of digital tools such as Wrike, Basecamp, Trello, Monday, and many others. These break down the walls separating remote teams who are working from home.

10. Wrap Things Up for the Day

The combination of longer workdays and proliferation of digital technologies makes it increasingly difficult for workers to unplug at the end of the day. Work can suddenly encroach upon time with your spouse, kids, and friends. Having a ritual for shutting down for the day can help you sign off on every incomplete task, goal, or project and to plan on how to wrap them up on the following day.

Work from Home Goes from Tactical to Strategic

Figuring out how to effectively work from home is no longer a temporary undertaking for most businesses and professionals. What was initially a tactical decision has now become a strategic initiative for the long term. And as many organizations are planning to institute hybrid workspaces that integrate work from home with physical office interactions, the steps they take today to tune and perfect their work-from-home policies and practices will play a critical role in the post-COVID-19 workplace. This includes how they leverage rented day offices, coworking space, and meeting rooms like Davinci Meeting Rooms as well as permanent office space (if they choose to continue using it).

About Patrick Spencer

Patrick Spencer (Ph.D.) is the President and Founder of TIRO Communications that helps companies develop, build, and manage content, customer, advocacy, and demand-gen programs. Included in its offerings is TIRO Cognition Insights, a data analytics tool that enables B2C and B2B businesses to pinpoint what their customers and competitors’ customers are saying and to identify corresponding actionable product, services, competitive, sales, and marketing intelligence. LinkedIn Profile: LinkedIn Website: www.tirocommunications.com