The way we work has changed forever. The vast majority of office workers want to work from home at least one day a week after the coronavirus pandemic has passed, and are seeking help to create work-life boundaries to improve their productivity while working from home. While working from home has its benefits, it can encroach on your personal life and increase the number of hours you work. Here, we look at ways to make working from home work for you.
Make sure you’re using the right technology
If the software you’re using at home is slow, try to update your devices. Ask your manager if they have a budget to upgrade your home work station. While this may mean spending some money, a decrease in your productivity could be more costly to the business you work for. Upgrading your technology and equipment may be well worth the investment so you have the tools to do your best work and be the best professional you can be.
Set your working hours and stick to them
Use your businesses operating hours as a time frame for your working hours to help you maintain a healthy work-life balance. With this in mind, aAny personal tasks, errands or projects should be done outside of work hours.
Multitasking and switching between your professional and personal lives can impact your productivity. Research shows that trying to do two things at the same time can make each activity longer to complete, which can add unnecessary hours and fatigue to your work day. Occasionally, you might have to adapt your working hours to accommodate someone else’s time zone, but don’t let that become a regular occurrence.
Don’t forget to let others, especially those that you live with, know what your hours are to manage their expectations also.
Create a routine that you can stick to
Whether it be starting your day with a cup of coffee, a jog or dropping the kids off at school, create a morning routine that ends with you starting work to boost productivity.
Not every meeting has to be a video meeting
Zoom meetings are great, but not every meeting has to be one.
Meetings are important to have, particularly when working from home. Meetings are the only touch-point you have with your colleagues. Pick up the phone and speak to someone. Save video meetings for the weekly check-in with your manager, your team or important clients.
Be positive and go easy on yourself
It takes serious focus to get a full-time office job done from an unconventional space. That said, everyone lets their attention drift sometimes. If you find yourself working one minute and looking for holidays the next, don’t be too hard on yourself. Try and take regular breaks so that you stay focused during ‘work’ time.
If you need help getting your team set-up for remote working, contact us today.
A few things organizations can do to protect themselves from cyber threats
Whether you’re working alone or seeking the services of IT support in London, you need to increase cyber security at your workplace. You can do this in the following ways:
• Educate employees
With cyber security, it’s important for your employees to actively apply the action plans. However, if they do this, they need to be educated about cyber crime, the attacks they may experience and what they can do to stop this from happening.
• Structure and safe-guard your data
The most-important thing to do is for you to identify what data is important for your organisation. That way you can re-structure data and add additional levels of protection. Backups and recovery plans must be in place to also ensure safety in case of a cyber attack. Therefore, this exercise will help you identify if there is any data theft.
• Draft a response plan
Set up a cyber security team in your organization. Ask them to come up with a flexible plan and apply this to keep your data safe. You can also seek input from your IT support.
• Equip yourself with new-age skills
Finally, upgrade your cyber security skill sets by having someone personally trained. Remember that just as hacking technology becomes more tricky, so does anti-hacking security technology. We would advise you to consult an IT company for the latest technology.
About IT-MSP
IT-MSP was founded in 2017 to provide London’s small & medium businesses with end-to-end IT services, right from purchasing and installing hardware to providing Mac, Windows & Linux support, cloud solutions, and data backup. We support our clients using proven, high-quality systems and security practices that blue-chip companies take for granted.
We consistently achieve excellent client satisfaction thanks to a process-driven approach, concise documentation and our team of friendly and highly trained London based engineers.
Youssef Baiza
Director
