How to survive working from home 

With current events you may find yourself facing the prospect of working from home for an extended period, you may already work from home occasionally but how do you do this for extended periods? 

At ISAAC we routinely work remotely, and we’d like to share some tips with you on how to not only survive but thrive during this period. 

Your environment 

If at all possible, have a dedicated area setup where you can work comfortably, this should be a quiet place free from distractions and should also be a place where you only work, try not to be tempted to sit on the sofa or even worse lie in bed! 

Having a place where you can go to work means that you are not distracted by what’s going on in your home, it also means that when you finish work you leave this place and do not return until the next day, giving a nice separation between your work and personal life. 

Your desk 

Try and have a dedicated desk to encourage good posture and mirror what you would normally have in an office, if you don’t have a desk then improvise, you’d be surprised what you can come up with. 

One enterprising ISAAC employee (who will remain nameless – for now) decided to setup his own standing desk in an effort to remain more active and to promote good posture 

Yes, that IS an ironing board, but the height is easily adjustable! 

Your tools 

You may be using a laptop or desktop provided by your employer or your own personal device, it is essential to ensure that you have access to all of the appropriate tools and resources you’ll need to perform your job function. 

Do you? 

• Have all of the necessary tools (Outlook, Word, Excel etc.) installed on your device? 

• Know how to access your company intranet/documents remotely, either via SharePoint or OneDrive? 
• If you use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to access company systems, is it installed and configured and do you know how to access it? 

 Your colleagues 

 Keeping in touch with colleagues can be difficult when working remotely, we strongly advise the use of Microsoft teams for collaboration. 

Teams can be used for instant messaging, audio and video calls, file sharing and more. 

 When using Teams do seriously consider using video to talk with your colleagues, maintaining that human touch is important when you aren’t regularly in the office.  

Yourself 

Last but by no means least is yourself, it’s absolutely critical to keep yourself in a good routine and fit and healthy when you work remotely.  

• Get dressed! – it may be tempting at first to work in your dressing gown but ensuring that you are showered and dressed before starting work will improve your productivity 
• Make sure to eat! – it’s quite common for home workers to skip meals as they are so busy they can forget to eat, make sure to take time to get away from your desk and eat. 
• Take breaks! – Even if it’s just 5 minutes every hour to make a cup of tea or stretch your legs, getting away from your desk is critical to your physical and mental well being. 
• Go for a walk! – get outside, maybe at lunchtime, even if it’s only for 15 minutes, fresh air and exercise is vital to keeping you healthy. Remember that if you are using Microsoft Teams you can take your mobile phone with you and take calls when out and about if you need to. 

 Below is a link to an excellent YouTube video on using teams to work remotely.

Working From Home Tips – Microsoft Teams Tutorial 2020 (YouTube)

We hope you’ve found this guide useful, if you’d like assistance with working remotely then get in touch with us and we’d be delighted to help you 

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