Working at home, or telecommuting, means you aren’t leaving your home to go to a company designated office. Instead, your home is your office.
Following tips helps you to carry out your work smoothly at home:
1. A safe and secure space
Find a safe space to work—good ventilation, proper lighting, good ergonomics, and comfortable furniture are just a few things to consider.
2. Use your best connection
A secure, password-protected Wi-Fi network or ethernet connection for the home is essential to a productive workspace. When using a wireless connection, consider your distance from the router, which can affect your connection quality.
3. Increase your desk space
If you have the space and budget for an extra monitor or two, this is a great way to do more work and see it all clearly. Learn how to connect multiple monitors for maximum display space. Using a laptop? Consider adding an ergonomic keyboard and mouse.
4. Personalize your workplace
Decorate your space with family photos or items that bring you comfort and minimize distractions.
5. Work in the cloud
Collaborating with colleagues, syncing documents, and backing up files is simple with tools like OneDrive, OneNote, Power Point, Excel, and Word. Make your documents virtual and accessible on the web and across devices.
6. Back up your documents
Avoid lost work by backing up your documents and data in the cloud and/or to an external drive. Learn how to back up your files to safeguard your information.
7. Sync your phone to your computer
Get to your documents, To-Do lists, Sticky Notes, and calendar from your phone with Microsoft Launcher, available in the Google Play store. (For Android phones only)
8. Scanner in your pocket
Scan written notes and physical documents right from your phone using the Office Lens app.
9. Timing is everything
Try working while your child is sleeping. That may mean getting up earlier than you normally would. If possible, schedule your most important tasks around your child’s bedtime and naptime.
10. Occupy their minds
See if your child would like to be your helper. Give them a job like organizing office supplies or separating markers and crayons by color.
11. Distance learning
A student’s learning can happen anywhere. Get to know the tools made to support learners of all ages and abilities, and see how your child’s core subjects and class discussions can happen with Office 365. Distance learning with Office 365: Guidance for parents and guardians
12. Family Activities
Keep your family entertained at home with a collection of activity templates including games, books, puzzles, and more.
13.Stay secure
Free wi-fi doesn’t mean it’s secure. Explore more secure options like a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to ensure your data stays safe. See more tips for working securely from home.
14. Communicate often
Make it a habit to connect frequently with your manager and your colleagues. Schedule daily or weekly calls to ensure you are staying on track, accountable, and up to date on what your team is doing.
15. Record the meeting
This is a helpful tool when giving presentations or walk-throughs. Once the recording is done, you can share it out to others.
16. Share your screen
Teams provides the ability to share your screen during meetings. If you need to show a document or walk through a presentation, you can easily screen share and make it visible to all.
17. Start group chats
If your organization uses Microsoft Teams, open a Teams channel to connect and collaborate with different groups. Start a shared document to bounce ideas off each other, share progress updates, or access files others have added to the channel.
18. To video or not to video
Video can often be intimidating or distracting. Alternatively, it can help you stay present and engaged. A good compromise is to turn your video on at the start of the meeting, then turn it off once things kick off.
19. Camera framing
Visibility is key. Point your camera so your face is completely in frame.
20. Find a headset
Headsets are helpful for multiple situations like taking calls and blocking out background noise. When considering headsets, think about the following:
• What will you use it most for?
• Do you prefer it to be noise-canceling?
• Should it be wireless, or Bluetooth enabled?
21. Check your surroundings
If you feel like your background may distract the person you’re chatting with or if there are privacy concerns, use the “blur my background” option in Microsoft Teams. Learn how to configure your camera privacy settings in Windows 10.