11 Best Practices for Working Remotely

Schedule different activities such as taking a short walk, listening to a podcast, or reading. Rest comes in various forms, and these activities could help give your mind a rest without the endless scrolling. Additionally, scheduling regular coffee breaks and walks, or doing a virtual workout during your lunch break, let you step away from your desk. Block off time on your calendar so you know what to expect at the beginning of every day. If you’re looking to get out of the house, a Wi-Fi-enabled coffee shop or coworking space is a great place for human interaction.

• Instead, you could bring in comedians, motivational speakers, or nutrition experts to give your team some food for thought over their lunch break.
• The tools you use to communicate and collaborate with teammates virtually are meant for work, and sometimes, for fun activities like team celebrations.
• Some of the more common extra benefits are a pension scheme or paid travel expenses.
• Once the team building meeting started for my online team I broke the ice by introducing my sandwich for the day and showing the team around my kitchen and house, like a fun house-tour.
• While the job is getting done, tasks are being completed and progress can be seen on a company level, absenteeism and churn are becoming bigger and bigger problems.

These benefits ensure that employees can take paid time off, are entitled to sick leave, get maternity and paternity leave, and are paid a minimum wage. The best option to use when planning a virtual lunch for teams across multiple sites and locations. Taking your team on a virtual lunch adventure can mean everything from exploring Google Maps street view on a shared screen to hiring a virtual tour guide to show everyone around an exotic locale. Another option remote work blog includes finding live webcams from places like wildlife sanctuaries, zoos, and other fascinating locations. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses. Next, check out this list of community building activities and this guide to virtual retreats. Virtual tea parties are gatherings where teammates meet up via Zoom to enjoy a cup of tea along with light refreshments.

Set Your Hours

The virtual team building lunch events were a success, so I decided to make sure that my remote team will be consistent in doing the meetings moving forward. So what I did was plan out the next 20 meetings, picking themes and topics for each of them in advance so we’d have ideas to go by. Then, and this https://remotemode.net/ is important, I shared the planner with the entire team, enabling them to give suggestions, make comments and vote on their favorite topics and themes or propose new ones. I set up a fixed date and time for each of these meetings and as time went on, I started diversifying the topics more and more.

• Working remotely doesn’t just apply to those who would work from home or in the same region as their company’s office.
• Because Skillcrush has always been remote, our staff has had years to figure out how to set healthy boundaries .
• If your remote team is geographically dispersed, then you should keep timezones in mind when planning your lunch.
• One cool benefit of having a remote job is the freedom to travel the world as you work.
• Sales Performance Transform your business, starting with your sales leaders.

As an employer, you can apply for an allowance for the paternity leave of your employee as well. New rules and regulations regarding paternity leave went into effect on July 1st, 2020. Since that date, partners of employees who give birth are entitled to take up to five weeks of additional paternity leave at 70% of their daily wage. Partners of pregnant Dutch employees are entitled to paternity leave. New fathers or partners get a full week of paternity leave after the birth of their child at full wages. If an employee does not use up all their holiday days in a year, they can use their leftover days for up to six months into the new year.

Being alone. With your own thoughts. All day. IS HARD.

Isolation is one of the main challenges you face as a remote worker. Let’s face it- how do you meet new people when you spend your 1-hour break on Netflix? Unless you make an effort to socialize, the odds are that you won’t.

This can dampen your happiness, ultimately bringing down productivity. Working in a flow state creates a sense of control and happiness in work. This state of mind boosts your creativity, while reducing stress.

of employees would like to work remotely one day a week or more after the COVID-19 crisis is over.

You can’t pay out unused PTO days in the Netherlands, so it’s in your employees’ best interest to use them. If an employment contract expires or an employee is let go with the remaining days, you are required to pay them out at normal wage.