After four weeks in lock down, the initial teething period of setting up a home office should be a thing of the past, and we should all have settled in too what may well be the new working normal.
Thanks to robust networks, share drives, MicroSIP, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and the like, team members can communicate and share viewing documents with the same enthusiasm and productivity as before. For some, the inevitable slowdown in general business activity, could allow for more free hours, which can be put towards proactive and forward-thinking business strategies etc. which we don’t always find the time for.
You may be surprised to learn the effect of the many distractions the ‘old office environment’ posed, and the immense implications of them.
It takes an average of about 25 minutes (23 minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact) to return to the original task after an interruption. Distractions don’t just eat up time during the distraction, they derail your mental progress for up to a half hour afterward (that’s assuming another distraction doesn’t show up in that half hour). In other words, that “30 seconds to check your WhatsApp” isn’t just 30 seconds, it’s 25 minutes and 30 seconds. (and that is if you have the will power not to quickly reply.)
These distractions not only inhibit productivity, they have negative emotional effects. Research has shown that attention distraction can lead to higher stress, a bad mood and lower productivity. At home, distractions will come mostly from the lack of self -discipline e.g. checking emails too frequently, surfing the net or responding to a personal WhatsApp message. It’s up to everyone to limit distractions.
The spare time created can be used by team members to ‘tidy’ their online filing system in their emails or Office 365, think about more efficient ways to do things, or study up on some area that you have wanted to know more about.
Some tips we found useful as a company are listed below as follows:
- Maintain your usual working hours of 7.5 per day and manage this time well
- Make sure you are at your desk from 8am to 1pm and from 2pm to 4:30pm
- Enjoy your lunch break, sit in the garden, veranda, or balcony, and soak up your surroundings
- Make a phone call, rather than emailing, this will save you time and keep up the personal contact
- Team managers to keep in regular contact with their teams, not only for work matters, but also to see how they are dealing with the lock down personally