Smartworking in the Coronavirus’s times

Our tips for best working from home

Smartworking ai tempi del coronavirusSmart working: one of the most frequently heard terms during these weeks of the Coronavirus health emergency. In Italian, “smart working” means “agile work.” Many companies were already using it before the crisis, while others were suddenly forced to adopt working from home.

However, this time, we’re all dealing with a slightly different kind of remote work. The challenge, except for those who live alone (if you do, #muchenvy), is that now home also includes parents, children not attending school, babies, dogs, cats, and more.

So, we’ve decided to share some useful tips for family-friendly smart working:

Smarworking Consigli

Time management

We’d love to take all those free courses to enhance our skills, reflect, or read that book we never had time for. But after the usual 8 hours of work, there are homework checks, dog walks, cleaning, dinner prep… and we realize we don’t actually have that much more free time than before. We recommend planning your entire day in detail, scheduling both work and non-work activities. By better defining your time, you create structure, improve coexistence, and even become more productive (hopefully).

Space management

Another crucial aspect of working from home effectively is finding the right space to do it. You need a quiet, tidy, silent area with reliable Wi-Fi! Some of us have already tested every room in the house and are still unsatisfied. The living room or kitchen might be viable alternatives—unless you have kids seeking bread and Nutella while you’re in a video call with your boss.

Using the right tools

Here are, in our opinion, the most useful tools for smart working:

Slack

To work efficiently from home and maintain good coordination with colleagues, effective communication is essential. Slack is ideal for this. It’s a popular tool for corporate collaboration, allowing you to create virtual rooms for communication, file sharing, group calls, and managing conversations with multiple users.

Google Hangouts (or Coffee Chat)

With a Google account, you can use this app to make video calls with up to 10 people at once. At 11:00 sharp, like Swiss clocks, we meet here for our indispensable coffee break. It’s a great way to combat the feeling of isolation.

Google Drive

Google Drive enables cloud-based work on text files, spreadsheets, presentations, and more. It also allows you to upload any document to the web, making it accessible outside the office.

Team Viewer

This famous remote control program lets you take control of another workstation via an internet connection. Simply install it on your PC and the device you want to access remotely.

Skype

Skype is the most common and widely used software for global communication. Millions of people and businesses use it for free video calls, one-on-one or group calls, instant messaging, and file sharing with other Skype users.

Microsoft Teams

Finally, we recommend Microsoft Teams, a unified communication and collaboration platform that combines persistent workplace chat, teleconferencing, content sharing, and app integration.

And last but not least, while no one will forbid you from staying in slippers all day, don’t forget that even if you’re at home, it’s better to put on a nice sweater and ditch the pajamas (at least during the week).

For now, that’s all from the Weblink smart working team.