For many HR departments, working from home is a great novelty, but there are many multinational companies that have been walking the remote work route for a long time and this system works for them. For example, companies such as WordPress, the world's leading website building platform, Google or Buffer, a company that creates social networking applications, work primarily remotely and have their employees scattered around the world. Nevertheless, their HR department shows high performance and employees are satisfied in the long term.
For all HR Managers, who now work from home, we have prepared some tips that take advantage of the above companies and allow them to perform HR qualitatively even if the HR professionals do not see each other physically with the employees.
Pay attention to the company culture
First, traditional myths about corporate culture need to be disproved. In traditional settings, it is often ignored because it is expected to form and form organically. However, the problem arises if the general climate in the office is not healthy. In this case, if we let the corporate culture be created automatically, it will consist of fear or laziness, and it will be very difficult for HR and senior management to change the corporate culture setting.
The opposite myth, on the other hand, is the notion that a loose corporate culture is a gimmick that solves all employee problems. Some HR departments believe that it is enough to buy a pool table or create a video game corner, and employee satisfaction is guaranteed.
In fact, corporate culture consists of two main elements: respect and trust. Regardless of whether you work in an office or work remotely. But how to build these values if the HR department and most employees work in the home office?
Establish expectations and standards of communication
Communication standards are set by most companies, but too often this is a one-sided issue. The company sets expectations and standards for working from home including how much work is expected of employees and when. However, an employee often does not know what to expect from management, but from other team members. He is assigned tasks, but he no longer knows the tasks of other team members and often does not even know why he is actually performing a particular task.
Communication, whether personal or remote, is always a two-way road. First of all, employees need to know the following:
- What tasks are handled by individual team members.
- What tasks are solved and by the supervisor and possibly other teams in the company.
- Who will respond specifically to his part of the tasks.
- Who they can turn to if they need advice or consultation.
- Whether colleagues online are ready to answer questions or if they are busy.
In the office during personal contact, it is simple to obtain the necessary information or find out when a colleague has time, when working remotely, we must communicate all of the above information in advance in written form.
Use remote communication tools
Use email for more complex communication that you want to record and it is not an extremely urgent matter. Office 365 platform is most often used for email communication during remote work in the Czech business environment.
Chats and video conferencing
Use chat tools for instant communication. For multi-person discussions, typically section or departmental meetings, use video calls. Their advantage is primarily the possibility of participants physically seeing and monitoring their nonverbal communication, which is invisible to the chat. Thus, video calls reduce the risk of misunderstanding.
The most common tools used for this area are:
- Microsoft Teams, which is included in the Office 365 package.
- Google Hangouts
- Facebook Workplace, which has implemented tools such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp.
- Slack, exclusively chat tool.
- Zoom, a tool only for video conferencing, its advantage is the possibility of integrating into Microsoft Teams.
At the time of the declared coronavirus crisis, all of the above pratforms offer the possibility of using basic functions free of charge.
Share documents
The ability to share documents online is very important, preferably with the ability to work together on one document. Working from home is easier and more flexible when using shared documents. Here again you can take advantage of a variety of solutions:
- Office 365 with OneDrive and SharePoint: clearly the most convenient platform for sharing documents, but also updates and internal information.
- Google G Suite: a platform that brings together Google's main tools such as Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Hangout.
Share your calendars
One central shared calendar, where everyone can see what individual employees are doing and can easily schedule meetings, chats, and video games, is the foundation of successful remote collaboration. Shared calendars can be used by most remote communication platforms.
Regulate communication, but only in general
Of course, communication using remote platforms needs to be regulated, but only in general. The basic rules should be as follows:
- Employees should chat either individually in two or in small teams, do not create large chat rooms where anyone can write anything and communication is so cluttered.
- Ask colleagues to always communicate their status, i.e. whether they are online, offline, busy, in a meeting, etc.
- Define working hours when colleagues working in the home office should be on the income and do not forget to set breaks including lunch breaks.
Avoid following chats, individual communication should remain a private matter of the persons chatting. Reassure users that chats are private and do not prohibit the use of GIFs, emoticons, jokes, videos, memes in chats.
Take advantage of e-learning
If your company is not using e-learning yet, now is the time to change that. For working from home, e-learning is an ideal tool. Home office offers more time for creative or project activities. Employees have the time to go into detail on a single issue, and e-learning can be a good opportunity for them to gain new information and advance their knowledge of the field.
Prepare interesting e-learning courses for employees in their field. If your HR department organizes language courses, soft skills courses or regular vocational courses, prepare study materials for employees and create tests to test their knowledge.
Automate HR processes
The personnel department performs a variety of administrative tasks that can be automated through a software solution and thus realized even in a situation where HR managers and specialists work from home.
In the case of remote work, we recommend automating mainly the following activities:
- Employee information records: thanks to the personnel software, which is accessible online, you will also have complete employee documentation with you at your home office, including records of transferred assets, implemented trainings, labor legal documents and complete contact details.
- Requests: online you will be able to deal with requests for leave, going to the doctor, sick days, sick days, sick leave, substitute leave.
- Employee departure: you can easily solve the administrative part associated with the employee's departure online.
- Recruitment of a new employee: the HR software allows you to solve the start faster and implement all administrative tasks online without the need to physically see the new employee
- Anniversaries and birthdays: the staffing software allows you to wish employees on a working anniversary and birthday even in the case of working in the home office.
Find a strategic partner for remote work
We will be happy to help you set up remote collaboration. We are Pinya, a Czech company dedicated to IT security, creating corporate intranet solutions primarily for SharePoint, Office 365, PowerApps business applications. We also specialize in custom software development such as Pinya HR, software for HR professionals. For work from home, we offer solutions to the following tasks in Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint:
- Sharing company documents between employees
- Planning and implementation of online meetings
- Central record of tasks
- Circulation and approval of invoices
- Minutes of meetings
- Project Management
- Supervision of the work done in the homeoffice mode
- Training/E-learning
Especially for HR professionals, we have developed Pinya HR software, which can simplify personnel work in the company. You can try Pinya HR for free and without obligation through a demo.
