Your organization may be undergoing some serious transitions right now.
As an HR professional, the pressure is on. Your employees are eagerly waiting to see what changes will be taking place overnight.
How prepared are you for the sudden changes?
With the shift changes that most workplaces have been undergoing in the past couple of weeks, we put together our best resources to help ease the transition:
- Work from home policy template
- Remote onboarding process checklist template
- New HR Process Poster Template
- Health & wellness remote work checklist template
- Remote work schedule template
- Crisis communication plan checklist
- New remote focused letterhead template
- Virtual event poster template
Watch: Tips for Remote Team Communication
Here are some great resources the Venngage team has put together to help your company make the switch to working remote easier:
1. Work from home policy template
The first step to transitioning to work from home is having a policy. About 57% of companies do not have work from home policies.
Why have a work from home policy?
Without a work from home policy, it’s difficult to manage remote workers. There need to be expectations and parameters created so that everyone is on the same page, this will decrease the amount of miscommunication as well.
You can use your remote team and collaboratively work on a work from home policy together. This work from home policy needs to be clear and needs to include working hours and communication methods. Make sure that the entire organization is on board with the policy as well by sharing it:
Some things to keep in mind for your work from home policy:
- Setting clear expectations
- Monitoring progress on tasks
- Communication
- Feedback
2. Remote onboarding process checklist
Having an onboarding process is important to integrating new employees. The better the onboarding process, the more likely the employee will succeed in the long run.
With remote staff, the process is a little different and requires some tweaking. Here are some onboarding work guidelines and tips:
- Expectations and goals should be made as clear as possible with your WFH employees
- Over-communicate with your new remote employees, this can be on a daily basis by using communication softwares like Slack
- Have your remote employee experience the work culture by having a lot of online communication
- Encouraging peer mentoring so that new employees have someone to turn to if they are having trouble with anything
- Making your new remote employees feel welcome is very important with regards to integrating them into a new remote team, the more friendly the team is, the more likely the new employee will transition well into the job
Once your guidelines are established, figuring out the steps to onboarding is important to keeping things seamless:
After figuring out your onboarding process use a checklist template that will help you stay organized and help inform your new hires:
You are gonna have to write a whole new onboarding manual because the world has changed.
Going fully online and remote is the new norm now so your onboarding process needs to reflect the changes:
Your company may still be recruiting while being fully remote, this guide is a great reminder of what you need to remember to give to new hires on their first day:
3. New HR process poster template
It’s easy for things to get lost in translation. If you’re noticing that the tone in messaging is turning sour, make the switch to phone or video so that nothing is lost in translation via messaging.
Coming up with a clear HR process poster will help alleviate a lot of potential miscommunication that could happen, especially with remote employees:
It may take longer to create a process template but in the long run, it helps decrease the amount of questions and confusion in your remote team.
4. Health & wellness remote work checklist template
Working from home can be a blessing or a curse, depending on how you handle it. The distractions at home can be endless. For all the advantages and benefits, there can be disadvantages and pitfalls.
There needs to be focus and strategy when you work from home to ensure that you’re benefiting from the experience.
Challenges of working from home
Your employees should be aware of the potential challenges they will be facing when they work from home.
People who work from home are more likely to experience burning out than people who don’t.
Loneliness is the biggest struggle for virtual jobs. Managers need to be vigilant on checking in with their employees to see how they are coping. A great time to do this is during one-on-one meetings.
The distractions are endless, trying to focus is hard. Just because you’re in front of your laptop doesn’t mean you’re being productive.
Remote team members may also find that they are working later than normal and not getting proper sleep leading to less productivity.
Sharing tips with your team on how to mentally adjust to working from home is important to decrease the feeling of isolation:
Here are some examples of how you your remote team can implement some of these suggestions:
- Use Google Hangouts to do an evening workout session or a lunch break stretch:
2. At Venngage, we started the work from home week by sharing pictures of our home office setups. Creating a workspace for yourself will prevent you from staying in bed all day.
3. Creating specific tasks that are scheduled on your calendar with time blocks, help you track your progress and manage your calendar. You can use apps like RescueTime to help track your productivity to make you more accountable.
5. Remote work schedule template
Planning out all the activities you can do throughout the week can feel daunting with so many new adjustments.
You will not have the face to face contact with your remote team. Having a schedule that people can reference if they miss something, is important.
You can use a schedule timeline template to help you plan out your month, week, and day with your remote team in a visual way:
A weekly schedule will help you prepare for the week so that you can stay organized. You can also repurpose these schedule examples to help your remote team stay aligned:
Having a daily schedule will help you figure out your own personal work time slots. It may be that you or your employees have to block an hour or two out for family time mid-day.
Being transparent about your work schedule with your remote team will help with miscommunication:
6. Crisis communication guide checklist
Crisis response can be a very scary thing to deal with. The first 15 minutes of your reaction has the power to make or break an entire company.
That’s why it’s important to be prepared ahead of time. You may never know the situation that you’ll face, but having a work-from-home guideline and plan will help with how equipped you feel as an organization.
If you don’t have a crisis response checklist, we’ve created one for you. Here is a checklist to help you be a step ahead of any crisis:
7. New remote focused letterhead template
Using a business letterhead template to brand your different policy changes will make the processing much more seamless.
Letterheads will make your branding more recognizable in all your business communication. Adding your logo brings out the brand and allows for it to be recognizable in the letterhead.
You can create your own customizable letterhead in no time:
8. Virtual event poster template
Online events are cheaper to host and work perfectly for those of us who work remotely.
In the same way that there are many advantages to working remotely, there are many to hosting a virtual event.
You’re not limited by the number of people like a physical venue would be. You can have more engagement with live chats. They are also more environmentally friendly and reliable.
Virtual team building is a great way of bringing your remote team together. There are many different ideas you can choose to create your virtual event:
- Coffee chit chats
- Remote team games
- Trivia + challenges
- Hot topic debates
- Virtual Workshops
The first stage of hosting a virtual event is creating a virtual event poster and making it look good:
After figuring out the event topic, date, and time, it’s time to plan even further. You can take advantage by partnering up with other companies and influencers and building relationships.
Make sure you promote your virtual event to your audience in advance so that they can prioritize it. 2-3 weeks is a good time frame.
Understanding what challenges come from working from home is important. What’s more important is knowing how to avoid these challenges so that you don’t lose the confidence of your remote team.
Having an HR bundle that is ready to go is important when you are choosing to have remote employees. It starts with creating a policy to implement, ensuring the needs of your employees are met, and then allowing for the right procedures to guide the process.
If you are well prepared using this template bundle, your company will already be successful in its work from home strategy.
Work from home policy FAQ:
What constitutes working from home?
Working from home is essentially doing what you would do in your office workspace, but in the environment of your home. A remote worker is someone who works outside the traditional office from their home.
Does working from home really work?
With the right discipline, working from home can be just as productive as working from your office – with the perk of saving commuting time. Making sure you have the right schedule and sticking to it is key to being successful as a remote worker.
How do you create a work from home policy?
A work from home policy is one that defines clear expectations and responsibilities from the employer to the employee. This policy makes it easier to manage and monitor your employees, making everything clearly defined. You can create a work from home policy using this template.
Important things to remember:
- Establishing a purpose
- Highlighting the expectations (for communication and responsiveness)
How do you manage a remote team?
Creating a digital workplace that incorporates different tools to communicate and collaborate is a great way of maintaining the management of your remote team.
Examples of tools to use are:
- Slack
- Zoom
- Trello
Planning constant meetings and setting clear expectations are also other important factors to implement for your remote team.
Related Guides
10 Tips for Effective Communication With a Remote Team [Templates]
11+ Tips for the Employee Onboarding Process
15 Performance Review Examples and Tips from an HR Manager
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