How to Maintain Your Organizational Strategy While Working from Home?
Under the effect of COVID-19, working from home (WFH) has been a go-to method. Not only for the safety of employees, but it is also for the development of your business.
To maximize productivity as well as allocating resources with efficiency, your company’s organizational strategy has to be put into careful consideration.
As a manager, what can you do to maintain your organizational strategy? Especially while everyone works in the comfort of their own home?
What is an Organizational Strategy?
Organizational strategy is the long-term plan including specific goals and vision for every company to grow.
It might sound like a fancy thing that is only applied to big companies or groups. However, small businesses such as a coffee shop or a bookstore also need to utilize their organizational strategy. It helps to allocate their resources (labor, money, products, etc.) and eventually, boosts their business activities.
An organizational strategy includes various steps and methods. It goes from evaluating the problems that the company is having, to budget adjustment, or maintaining the company’s culture.
An effective organizational strategy will be a basis for companies to set directions and organize workflow. So that they can align with their business priorities and goals.
You can read more about how to create an organizational strategy for your business here.
How to Maintain Your Business Organizational Strategy While Working from Home
Although everybody cannot be together in the same office, the organizational strategy can also be adapted within the company.
It will help to set up goals for all employees, help them make easier strategic decisions. Furthermore, it enhances the communication between employees.
Here are some tips for companies to raise the bars using organizational strategy while working from home:
Focus on communication
It is easier to let your employees know what you want in the office. You can do this by simply calling them into the room and talking to them.
However, with WFH, it is important to enhance communication using all methods possible, such as e-mail, Zoom meetings, or private video chats.
Another method to communicate is to “over-communicate”. This means that you explain everything clearly to make sure that the goals and the missions are understood thoroughly by your staff. Information given by team leaders should be relevant, informative, and clear.
With WFH, communication is the most important key. It encourages people to work on time. And it has to be done with an immeasurable amount of consideration and delicacy.
You don’t want your strategy and the steps to reach your business goals to be vague and overarching. Virtual meetings need to be planned and conducted effectively. You can also cater to a specific individual in case they need help. It is all about reaching your goals!
Support your employees’ wellness and productivity
In the case of WFH, it may hard for employees to care about their own wellness and productivity. Because of distractions and chilling atmostphere at home.
Some staff can’t fully focus on their jobs, while some work whenever they can without taking breaks. So it’s still important to care about your staff and increase their attention, productivity and wellness even from far away.
Providing specific care for their health and wellness is one of the main strategies to show them your trust and support. Subsequently, the happier the employees feel at work, the greater productivity they will bring to the table.
You should hold different training sessions about conserving health and mental wellness while working from home, virtual meditating sessions, or guidance in case of emergency problems.
It’s better to show employees that the company can be one of the places that they can reach out to in case of trouble. It’s also essential to encourage break time or break down the tasks into smaller chunks to allow your staff to take some time for themselves, as working from home is more likely to result in more overtime hours.
Maintain your company culture
The company culture is another factor that needs to be concerned. With a proper organizational strategy, workplace culture can be enhanced and maintained even though you are far away from each other.
It starts with the leaders, who will connect the relationships between everybody in the teams with integrity, direct them to final goals while giving them a certain amount of respect, support, and even reward.
A good corporate culture will create positivity among the employees as well as nurturing their inner talent and maximizing their efforts to achieve the final results.
Provide a clear schedule
If you’re running a shift-based business and your customer service team is now working from home, providing a clear schedule in advance allows your staff to be well-prepared and present for their shifts.
As scheduling can be a mess if you jot things down on a piece of paper or a notebook, there are various applications with different features given to help you with employee scheduling and management. You can manage your employees’ shifts and tasks easily without breaking the bank (including your time bank).
If your business allows employees to manage their own schedule, flexibility should be encouraged so that your staff can complete their work with ease and less pressure. You can provide them with a productive and healthy sample day schedule as some may find it helpful.
Keep track of work activities
Keeping track of workflow, documents, virtual meetings, as well as other work activities, is another vital thing to do. If you don’t, it’s easy to get lost in a huge amount of work stuff.
When it comes to working from home, it’s all about maximizing productivity to reach your goals using all the given platforms and tools possible.
Adapting your organizational strategy for working from home will be an effective method to keep your staff on the same page and work towards mutual goals. Plus, you can increase your staff’s job satisfaction and maintain a positive company culture.
