As more of our staff positions are classified in a work mode that includes remote work, we hope that the below tips, best practices and sentiments will help support you.

Can you relate to any of the common challenges of remote work below?

• Social isolation and lack of face-to-face supervision
• Distractions at home
• Balancing work life and personal life
• Aspects of your job have changed or been placed on hold; all meetings are online
• Staying active

Tips & Best Practices for Yourself

Work Schedule

• Set up a daily schedule with a start and end time; consider certain daily rituals.
  • If you are working at home with kids, block off time on your calendar to offer some flexibility.
• Set boundaries for yourself - when do you turn work on and off? How do you signify the end of your workday? Consider putting your laptop in a drawer at the end of the day or turning email off on your phone.
  • Communicate these boundaries to your team and your manager.
• Socialization is important! Continue regular team meetings, consider taking coffee and lunch breaks with your colleagues virtually; consider virtual happy hours!

Workspace

• Set up a “designated office space” in your home so that you can separate work from your personal life.
  • Remember that you can bring home some of your office equipment .
• How do you avoid distractions? Close doors, use noise canceling headphones, let others know when you need to be left undisturbed.

Health & Wellness

• Don’t forget to move around! Go for a walk or do an online exercise or yoga video.
• Natural light helps keep you energized! Open curtains and windows when possible.
• To help avoid visual exhaustion, try this tip: Every 20 minutes look away for 20 seconds at something 20 feet away.
  • Chrome extension to remind you with eye exercises

Managing a Remote Team

Managing a team remotely can feel like a completely different experience. Below are some tips and best practices for managers with a remote team. Also, continue to reference the HR Workplace Guidelines page for the most recent updates to policies and procedures related to COVID-19 and remote work.

Engage Your Team

• Hourly workers should continue to have a regular work schedule; develop a system to check-in at the start and end of the day
• Establish structured daily check-ins with your team members.
• Check in with each team member to understand their needs in a remote environment; consider their position and main responsibilities - have they shifted? Do their work deliverables look different now?
• Establish “rules of engagement” for your team. Share new expectations around participation and responsiveness.
  • Be mindful of inclusion and balanced “airtime” in meetings, so that everyone feels seen and heard.
• Offer encouragement and emotional support.
• Remember to offer sick time when needed, and track sick and vacation time off as usual.

Communicate with Your Team

• Consider the complexity and scope of the your communication need and use the best medium or tool.
• Communicate often - your team will want to feel like they know what’s going on and will want to be informed of what everyone is working on - what tools can you leverage?

Leverage technology

• What tools do you want to use for certain tasks?
  • Zoom, Teamwork Desk & Projects, Google Suite, Slack, CCA Portal
• Set up a team channel using Google Chat to help everyone on your team stay connected and informed.
• Provide several different communication options, such as instant messaging/chat, video, phone calls.

Coaching and Feedback

• Do goals need to be adjusted for certain team members?
  • For front-line staff, set clear daily metrics and expectations so that you can track performance.
• Try to make coaching more frequent and consistent - coach both formally and informally.
• Ask for feedback on how you are doing as a remote leader.
  • Be consistent in asking for feedback - build it into your 1:1 meetings so that it’s regular and ongoing.

Best Practices for Effective Virtual Meetings

Getting Started

• Open the meeting a few minutes early or spend the first few minutes checking in to see how others are doing.
• Set clear expectations and ground rules for your team during remote meetings:
  • Turn off your phones, don’t check emails or multitask, team members should participate
  • If it’s a smaller team, suggest not muting

Managing the Meeting

• Set a clear agenda and be sure to pause for interaction every few slides.
• To increase participation, share up front that you would like discussion and input.
  • If it’s a larger meeting, you can use the “hand raising” or chat features
• Consider a stretching session during the meeting to break things up and allow for some activity!
• Check out this article on more tips about getting people to actually participate in virtual meetings!

Follow Up

• Redundant communication can be helpful to ensure that people have heard you and are clear with the outcome. Establish multiple checkpoints throughout the meeting.
• Consider following up an important meeting with an email recap.
• As a manager, be mindful of how many meetings you are setting during the day - you don't want to overload your team.

Do you have tips to share? Email hr@cca.edu and we’ll add them to the list!