Remote working challenges: A shareable resource on how to work from home

As governments rapidly evolve their response to the current Coronavirus outbreak, many organizations in the US, Europe, and the rest of the world have been forced to close offices and order staff to work from home. Drawing on our own remote working experiences, this article provides a free advisory resource the Gomo team has developed to help those who might be new to remote work.

In these strange new days of social distancing and office closures, a great number of people have rather suddenly found their morning commute transformed. The office is now only a matter of paces from the breakfast table, and working from home is no longer just available to a few as an exceptional or occasional perk: for the foreseeable future, it’s the main way for many to do business.

While seasoned remote workers will be (literally) right at home with the new arrangement, for the rest of us there may be a period of adjustment. Working comfortably and productively from home has unique challenges - distractions, broken routines, the risk of social isolation.

We’re fortunate in that our team has plenty of remote working experience. Whether we’ve been on the road for the latest eLearning conferences, managing communications between different worldwide offices or staying home to focus on perfecting a critical piece of code for a new feature. So given the current situation, we wanted to adapt some of our own resources on the topic for a wider audience.

Guide: How to work from home (and actually be productive!)

Drawing on our experiences, and incorporating info from the wider Learning Technologies Group and our clients, we’ve pulled together a quick guide to getting the best out of working from home, covering the following topics:

• Maintain Your Routine: All about the habits to emulate from your usual routine.
• Exercise Regularly: Ideas for staying fit without your commute.
• Optimize Your Environment: A tidy desk is the sign of a tidy mind?
• Be Extra Communicative: Staying in touch with your teams.
• Schedule and Track Your Work: Timekeeping with no office opening hours.
• Set Boundaries: Separating work and home to get the best out of both.
• Recognize the Limits of Chat and Emails: Why the medium is as important as the message.

Click here to read ‘How to Work From Home (And Actually Be Productive!).’

This course can be added to your Gomo account on request (where you will be able to edit and customize it for your learners and staff), or feel free to link to it in its current form as an external resource in your email newsletter, LMS (where supported) or Learning Experience Platform.

We hope you find this resource useful, and look forward to continuing to create great eLearning content with you—even if our office surroundings will look a little different for the foreseeable future.