An Effective Work From Home Guide for Businesses

The outbreak of the pandemic has caused many businesses, both large and small, to struggle. Many places across the country have implemented social distancing measures to ensure public health safety. As a result, many businesses have started organizing for their employees to Work From Home. However, this is a relatively new working model in Vietnam. Therefore, most businesses don’t know how to operate effectively. If your business is facing the aforementioned issues, you definitely shouldn’t miss this article by 1Office! 

What is Work From Home?

This is a relatively new term for many businesses; it has only really become common in Vietnam in the last 1-2 years during the pandemic. Work From Home is also known as Work Remote. It means working remotely, either from home or any other location without having to be physically present at the office. 

With this working model, tasks within the business are discussed and completed online. Employees do not have to come to the office unless it is absolutely necessary. However, not every position or job can adopt WFH. It is only suitable for certain jobs or positions.

According to a Gallup poll, 54% of office workers are willing to leave their current job for a new one with more flexible hours. Thus, we can easily see that this is a popular work trend for the future. 

Essential Factors for Effective Work From Home for Businesses

First, to find suitable solutions for their business, managers need to understand the existing problems their business faces when working remotely. From there, they can research and find the most appropriate solutions for the business.

Always Stay Connected with Employees, Colleagues, and the Business When Working From Home

Maintaining connection among individuals within the business is crucial when working remotely. This is the only way to maintain work continuity and ensure that tasks remain on schedule. 

Establish Working Hours When Working From Home

Whether working from home or at the office, we need to have clear working hours. For example, before social distancing, if your business’s working hours were from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM, then you should maintain those same hours even when working from home. 

Create a Task and Progress Tracking List

Create a list of tasks that need to be done and allocate time appropriately. Assign tasks to the relevant individuals in the business. Additionally, requiring employees to report on their work regularly is equally important.

Build a Suitable Work From Home Process

Most businesses that are ineffective at remote work lack a fixed work process. Working without adhering to a process and schedule leads to many problems, such as forgetting tasks, performing tasks incorrectly, difficulty searching for information, and challenges in compiling results… And certainly, it is also very difficult for managers to track work progress. 

The Reality of Businesses Implementing Work From Home

Due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, businesses in Vietnam were forced to switch to remote work. Many business groups transitioned to WFH quite smoothly. However, the majority of businesses were still quite awkward with this change. Many problems arise when businesses implement WFH, with common reasons including:

Inadequate Infrastructure and Facilities

For many employees who work on personal computers, working remotely during the pandemic was not too difficult. However, for some more specialized positions, such as designers, programmers, or jobs that use internal networks, company computers, or production lines… WFH seems impossible. 

Difficulties in Exchange and Communication

Communication within a business plays a very important role. It is the bridge that helps individuals in the business discuss, exchange information, and handle work quickly and accurately. 

Currently, many businesses use free chat applications to discuss work during WFH. This is not an effective way for managers to convey important and official information to employees. Because messages get buried quickly, are forgotten, or the topic changes, preventing your employees from interacting in time (like, confirm, comment, etc.). 

Similarly, we can mention the Email channel. Exchanging work via email is truly effective only when you need to convey official information one-way, if you don’t prioritize collecting feedback and opinions from the team.

Exchanging work through social networks like Facebook or Yammer is also not highly effective. Although your employees can interact very quickly on these platforms, they suffer from the same problems as free chat applications. 

Therefore, what businesses really need is an application that makes it easy to discuss work and conveniently search for and update information. 

See more: 7+ Work From Home Applications to Help Businesses Achieve KPIs Even During the Pandemic

Inability to Manage Employees When Working From Home

This is undoubtedly a problem that every business faces when working remotely. The home working environment is completely different from the professional working environment at the company. This greatly affects employee concentration.

Managers themselves are also always in a state of anxiety, as it is difficult to monitor whether employees are actually working. Without tracking work progress, they cannot know if the employees’ performance at home meets the set requirements.

The inability to manage employees is also one of the reasons for a significant decline in business KPIs during WFH. Therefore, finding an application that helps managers easily track work progress and employee status is extremely urgent. This is a difficult problem that needs to be solved quickly for businesses to operate well during the pandemic. However, reality shows that there is very little software on the market that supports businesses in tracking the work progress of remote employees.

A “Made in Vietnam” Technology Solution to Enhance Remote Work Performance

Among the WFH applications for businesses currently on the market, 1Office is considered a superior remote work solution because it has overcome the weaknesses of separate work and HR management software. With 1Office, both managers and employees can carry out all business activities uniformly on a single platform, making it easy to capture information and communicate while working. Businesses can solve the following problems:

• Centralized, professional management on a single platform: Businesses can both manage and monitor project and task progress, as well as interact and communicate internally with participating departments. In addition, departments can still complete document signing through the “Digital Signature“ feature integrated into the 1Office platform. Working from home becomes truly effective because all documents and contracts that need approval and signing are no longer an issue with “Digital Signature“.
• Remote work control: 1Office helps businesses closely control the performance and quality of work of each individual and department to ensure project progress and promptly detect emerging issues.
• Save time – optimize operating costs: Choosing a comprehensive, multi-tasking software not only helps businesses operate uniformly and synchronously but also saves time and operating costs. The usage fee is from only 2,000 VND/user/day.
• Strengthen internal cohesion when working from home: Applying technology to operations, the 1Office platform features an internal network with a structure similar to Facebook. Here, employees can easily communicate, maintain interaction, and share useful information with each other.

Work From Home is a relatively new form of work in Vietnam. However, this will be the working trend of the future. With the information 1Office has shared above, we hope it will be helpful for your business in the process of operating a remote workforce. 

Interested managers, please leave your information at the link below to receive a free consultation to help optimize your business’s remote work processes.

See more: Work From Home: Remote Task Assignment – Maximum Efficiency