Productivity is one of the most trending topics these days. People who work from home continually are dealing with change in workplace settings as well as a lot of anxiety related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. There are couple of things an organization can do to ensure employees remain engaged and productive in this new context.

Transparency

Considering the amount of confusion and rising fear due to corona virus, workers will be on-edge more than normal. From anxiety to apathy, a wide variety of emotions are on display. Let them know it is okay. Explain the company plan, let them have a mental break from everything if they need to, be open about the current state of the company and what the coming months will look like. When you are aware of what may happen, you can plan for it. As a leader, a voice of reason and composure would better reassure the team. The more empathy, gratitude, and understanding, you can show the more opportunity you will have to calm you team down and the better they can do their job.

Set and work towards practical goals

The lack of control over the ongoing situation brings stress to your employees who may eventually fall in a state of learned helplessness, meaning the belief that, they can do nothing because everything is out of their hands. Operating with clear goals not only brings productivity, can be a helpful distraction from nervous thinking and builds a sense of self-efficacy — the idea you can achieve your goals.

Touchbase with your team daily

Schedule formal, daily virtual meetings with your team to check-in and check-out every day and make sure everyone is aligned and on target.  On a less formal basis, one can send messages to the team member asking about their well being and if there is any place where help is required. These touch points make sure everyone is connected and ready to function.

Promote self-care

Encourage team members to take time out to relax, exercise, and generally indulge in something that calms and rejuvenates their heart, mind, body, and spirit. Such exercises keep everyone balanced.

Augment your workforce

During this transition from workplaces to home offices, there will be a drop in efficiency. With so much going on around us, keeping up with boring, mundane activities is harder, people will make mistakes and get distracted easily.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools can mimic the interactions of humans with computer to perform daily office tasks like extracting information from invoices or contracts and entering data into spreadsheets or CRM system such as Salesforce, freeing employees to perform more exciting cognitive tasks. Productivity goes up and costs come down.

Want to learn more about exciting opportunities RPA can bring? Let’s get in touch!