Home office tips: Organize teams successfully

Published on March 20, 2020
from Bernd Kleinschrod

Working from home is part of everyday life for us as a digital agency: we spend almost 90 % of our working time remotely. And Generation Z is doing Home office even a condition.

Over the years, we have tried out many tools, made rules, broken rules and made mistakes. And we've also broken a few things in the process. But we have learned, and that has been valuable. To help your team work successfully from home (or even just remotely), we have put together our best home office tips.

The right mindset is crucial

For many managers, it is an unfamiliar situation when employees are suddenly no longer physically available. One thing is particularly important here: Have confidence!

No loyal employee goes to the home office and thinks to himself: "Wooohooo, Netflix & Chill!"

Most team members work through their tasks more efficiently than in the office. Those who don't complete their tasks at all will sooner or later be found out. And those who finish their tasks faster have earned an early finish.

The results of the work should always take precedence over the hours put in. Instead of literally sitting through the 40 hours and twiddling your thumbs, relaxation is the order of the day. This ensures more productivity and creativity.

It is therefore essential that you refrain from micromanaging and concentrate as a manager on the right objective. This gives employees the right guidance and tasks can be derived from this.

When you talk to your employees, Check the well-being of people and not just the tasks to be completed. Ask where there are difficulties or needs. Both in team meetings and in 1:1 conversations. And help with the points mentioned - by either eliminating them yourself or delegating them.

And no matter what role you have in the company: Be organized, efficient and hardworking! Organize your week and your day.

Put yourself together before the start of the week: What topics do I want to deal with this week? And every morning: What are my 3 big topics for today? Stick to this plan and try not to get distracted. Keep your goal in mind.

Set a core working time

Despite all the freedom that the home office offers: Agree a core working time with the team. What has worked well for us at 9 to 12 o'clock and from 1 to 3 p.m.. Whether the early riser starts at 6 a.m., the owl sits down at the PC at 10 p.m. or the high performer completes his entire day's work in 5 hours: give the team this freedom to knit their private lives around the rest of their working time.

During core working hours All communication channels open be. It is also advisable to set response times: Employees should respond to direct/chat messages (Slack, Skype, etc.) within 15 to 20 minutes to enable fast and efficient communication. E-mails, on the other hand, should be answered within 36 hours (working days), for example.

But also make it clear that this only applies to core working hours in order to keep the "I-must-always-be-available" stress from employees, which can be a burden in the long term.

Meetings & Organization

Regular coordination is important in the home office. Organize a weekly check-in meeting with all employees. Organize this in such a way that it maximum lasts one hour.

Additional check-in meetings are also required. Frequent check-ins between mentor and mentee ensure guidance for new/inexperienced team members.

The meeting otherwise known as the "daily stand-up" within the individual teams should also be continued digitally. A maximum of 10 minutes, in which each participant lists a maximum of 5 points: What have I achieved, what's next? It is best to hold this meeting at the beginning or end of core working hours, not in between.

Make sure you also take the opportunity to break up pillar structures, because teams should not be understood exclusively as departments (marketing, IT, sales, development, etc.). Teams should also be set up on an interdisciplinary basis, organized according to projects: This could be a team for the introduction of home office consisting of IT, HR and the works council, for example. Or a team that works together on a specific customer project and is made up of employees from sales, development and after-sales.

Important principle for meetings

Another important tip for working from home. In order to make communication in the home office as efficient as possible, the following principle should always apply Increase project transparency to avoid mistakes, uncover hurdles and share learnings.

Ideally, the project participants report on what they have contributed to the achievement of objectives in the past period, what is pending in the coming period, which hurdles are preventing them from implementation and which mistakes have led to which findings (courage to make mistakes!). This reduces problems, increases transparency and communication and thus ensures the long-term success of the project.

Important: This should not be a command-and-control event where a status is reported to management. The Team members inform each otherin order to increase project transparency regarding progress and challenges.

If you have nothing to contribute, you are welcome to skip. Skipping does not mean that you have not done any work, but shows respect for others with regard to the limited time available.

Determine Ideally, you should also have a Moderatorwhich focuses in particular on time, but also on discussions. If discussions develop that do not affect everyone involved, Cancel the discussion and ask those involved to organize a separate meeting for this purpose. The moderator should also change, so dass jeder einmal die Rolle innehält und ein Verständnis dafür entwickelt.[vc_gallery el_id=“gallery-260423″ medias=“83188,83189,83190,83191,83192,83193″ gutter_size=“3″ screen_lg=“1000″ screen_md=“600″ screen_sm=“480″ single_overlay_opacity=“50″ single_padding=“2″]

Documentation of meetings

Document everything: Write notes about the meetings and share them with everyone who needs to know. If someone misses a meeting, they should be fully informed through the notes. Establish a standardized document and folder structure to maintain an overview.

Decide who should take the notes. Or does everyone enter their own points? Decide before the meeting.

Documentation of processes

Instead of carrying out classic on-the-job training, you should document your processes. What steps are necessary to carry out a certain task? What needs to be taken into account? What results are expected?

Although this is a major one-off effort, it saves valuable working time in the medium term. Employees can easily follow the documented processes and refer to them at any time.

Tools

With the web rockets we work with Jira, Slack, Skype, Hangouts, Whereby and GSuite.

We have already gotten to know many tools, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. At the end of the day, it almost doesn't matter which set you choose.

Almost all major tools have now been adapted for the European market and fulfill the corresponding requirements from the Data protection.

We have tried the following and can recommend them:

Video conferences

Zoom
Hangouts (comes with GSuite)
Whereby
Skype
Teams
Discord

Tip: Wear headphones to avoid unpleasant echoes!

Team chats

Slack
Skype
WhatsApp
Teams
Notion
Telegram
Discord
Mattermost,

Task management

Jira
Trello
ToDoist
Notion

Exchange files

Google Drive (GSuite)
WeTransfer
Dropbox

Collect knowledge

Confluence
Notion
Dropbox Paper
Microsoft Notes
Google Docs (GSuite)

Working together on documents

GSuite (presentation, docs, file exchange, etc.)
Microsoft 365
Dropbox Paper

Phone calls

V1: Switch to business cell phones and do without landline numbers
V2: Placetel as a telephone system in the cloud

Bonus tips for working from home

Stay agile

Do you constantly question your working methods? Do our rules and tools help or do they get in the way? Are the meetings efficient? Does everyone feel comfortable? And so on.

A regular meeting to question and re-evaluate working methods and organization is helpful. Involve employees in particular. If necessary, collect anonymous feedback from your employees.

Don't go straight to your desk after getting up

When working from home, avoid going straight to your desk after getting up. Go for a 15-minute walk first, have a leisurely breakfast, do a little housework or meditate. It doesn't matter what, but develop a little morning routine.

Take breaks

Whether every 90 minutes or according to the Pomodoro technique every 25 minutes: Regular breaks are important. A Time timer is a great tool for the home office to keep track of time.

Excursus: Home office or remote work?

Many people use the terms home office and remote work interchangeably. But there is a crucial difference: home office implies working from home. With remote work, I can be wherever I want (including at home, of course) - as long as I stick to the established rules.

We recommend: Let your team work wherever they want. In essence, it doesn't matter whether the employee is at home or in the southern Spanish sun. At least throughout Europe there is now good and cheap internet, in some cases even better than in Germany. But make sure that the core working hours (see above) can be adhered to: As soon as employees work in a completely different time zone and therefore have to put in night shifts, it gets exhausting

Bernd Kleinschrod

Bernd is co-founder and managing director of webraketen. His passion is online marketing. He is happy to pass this on as a lecturer, consultant and author.