5 Things To Do If Working From Home

We have assembled a list of 5 things you must do now if you and your team are suddenly working from home (WFH).

This list comes from a webinar we did with InVision's former Chief Product Officer, Brent Tworetzky, and from former Chief People Officer, Mark Frein (note: InVision has a full-time remote workforce of 900 employees).

We had about 70 companies listen and watch as Brent and Mark laid out a number of good, detailed recommendations and fielded a lot of questions.

Anyone thinking WTF while WFH should review this list and then watch the video from our recent webinar (at bottom of this post).

There are some overlaps and repeats in each section – that's intentional. It's part of over-communicating to you the importance of those things, including the importance of you over-communicating to your teams.

 1. Set Rules and expectations (create a "social contract”)

For Zoom meetings:

• video on
• no multi-tasking (note: see debate in vid below about whether OK to allow)
• On Zoom, over express yourself (hand and facial gestures are important – also use virtual backgrounds if you can...as part of bringing some warmth; I use art for my backgrounds; use a background that expresses a passion of yours)
• end meetings 10 minutes before the hour to give breaks
• start meetings on time, which means everyone shows up a minute early
• Use meeting best practices (next steps, accountable, etc)
• Make sure people calendar in lunch and breaks around meetings

Other elements of the social contract:

• Hours: set hours for the work day and a timezone, if necessary (i.e. 10am to 6pm ET)
• Select a key messaging channel and tell employees that is where the most important communications will be delivered

Other key rules/changes:

• Set single source of truth for key documents/comms channel
• Again, establish daily calendar/meeting rituals — i.e. as per above, end meetings 10 minutes early to give a break between meetings AND require employees schedule 30 minute breaks during the day to take a walk, etc.
• Do skip-levels even more frequently (so important)
• Conduct cross-functional meetings regularly (this is key – in the remote world all the cross-functional relationships tend to wither)
• Establish or continue good decision-making rules

2.    Focus

• Make sure strategy is clear and over-communicate it (Note: one of the benefits of going remote is it pressures you to create and over-communicate clear strategy, mission, goals)
• Build or maintain a good goal-setting process
• Create a single source of truth for strategy, missions, goals and other key docs (repeat from above)

3.    Human and connected

• Over-communicate all the time
• Again, on Zoom, over express yourself (hand and facial gestures are important – also use virtual backgrounds if you can...as part of bringing some warmth; I use art for my backgrounds; use a background that expresses a passion of yours)
• Record short videos (less than 3 minutes – use Zoom itself or Quicktime) to communicate key messages
• Again, tell employees which comms channel they must read regularly (especially if using both Slack and Gmail and possibly other comms tools)
• Again, conduct cross-department meetups (repeating this because it's so important – employees will naturally focus only on their department teams and stop interacting with other humans across the company)
• Again, conduct skip levels (can't just check-in over Slack)
• Make and communicate a clear org chart
• Build a culture of authenticity and ask employees to bring their whole selves (consider what InVision does: "Cribs" sessions where each employees walks their team around their house)
• Have a *no* judgement culture – especially important when people are working in home offices that are also kitchens, closets, bedrooms...with kids, dogs, etc.
• Schedule fun or game sessions (we have a separate games webinar coming up for building team morale of remote employees)

4.    New hires are at risk – especially new managers

• Give new hires extra love
• And extra onboarding
• Pair with a buddy
• For new managers do a 360 review at end of first 30 days
• For your suddenly remote managers managing remote teams....consider ways to get feedback on how they are doing – if you are not intentional about it, then you won't know

5.    Make it comfortable for employees

Here's what InVision does for new employees

• $500 budget to build home office (Most important: buy a refurbished Aeron)
• Big monitors
• Noise-cancelling headphones

For all of you with suddenly remote teams...you may not be able to buy equipment or solve problems with kids and spouses all home at the same time so...give everyone some slack and be flexible. This is hard for everyone.

Here are the 4 key tools they use internally at InVision:

• Zoom
• Slack
• Gmail
• Freehand (an InVision tool for whiteboarding)

A few other random tips:

• If an employee has a really bad home context (i.e. too many people, kids, too little space, too much noise), then get creative during this crisis. Look for options – closets, neighbor houses/apartments...or help them think creatively about their hours.
• Set up and operationalize backups to Zoom – i.e. if Zoom goes out, everyone goes to Google Hangouts. And then if that doesn't work, to Facetime (if people have iphones). Of course, voice calls also work.
• Use all your good tools of leadership and management - i.e. don't just ask employees how they are. Ask about (and use the names of) children, spouses, etc. And ask specific questions: "How are you doing working from home...have you been able to shop for all your food, etc....do you have loved ones you are worried about (parents in assisted living, or family abroad or in riskier zones)?

See the full video below. Watch it for more tips and nuances.

Thanks again to Brent and Mark.

Good luck WFH!