With the spread of COVID-19, working from home is no longer an option to many agencies, it has become a job perk and a way to hire talents.
Since many of the workers are not used to working from home, on the other side, Marketers – and everyone who is working at digital agencies- are traditionally adapted to working from home.
So, if you are a marketer but still struggling with adapting to working from home, we brought you in this article some tips and tricks that will help you to become more adapting to online work from home, as well as pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of working remotely, plus some of the tools that will help you during your working from home period, Let’s Get Started!
Working From Home Tips in Digital Agencies
Since the pandemic has affected so many fields, many companies including digital agencies encourage their employees to work remotely from home.
For many employees, working from home is a new reality and it takes some time to get used to it…….
Below there are some tips to help you – working from home employee- to get used to working from home until this pandemic ends.
1- Establishing A Designed Work Space
The first thing you miss while working from home is the time you spend getting ready to work.
That time helps your brain to get ready for the day to be productive.
When you’re working remotely, you can do the same thing, you can spend little time in the morning drinking coffee or read the newspaper to allow your brain to get ready for work, as well as that a designed workspace in your home will help you and your brain to adapt to working from home.
2- Make a Schedule For Everything
One of the most irritating things remotely workers suffer from is Wasting Time.
Making a detailed schedule will definitely save you from the hook of getting lost through the day.
Your schedule doesn’t have to be all about work, you can involve regular breaks, meals, and even workouts, as long as you have a specific time for everything you will make the best out of your day while working from home.
3- Share and Collaborate
Being stuck at home because of the pandemic might get into your nerve, you might think that this is a solo experience and you are the only one who is suffering from it, but by sharing your schedule with your colleagues, for example, it will make you feel less lonely and will make interacting between you and your colleagues better.
4- “The Pause That Refreshes”
Working at home can be as stressful as working from the office, but here is a pro tip for you to avoid that stress: take a pause that refreshes.
Don’t stare at a screen when you don’t have to stare at any screen. While working remotely, it’s easy to stare at your laptop or mobile screen for hours, without even realizing that, and by that it will end up sucking up your energy and even creativity.
Try to take a break to rest your brain and your eyes every once in a while to refresh your brain.
5- Teach yourself new things
The hardest thing about working remotely, especially if you’re working in a creative field like marketing or designing, is the lack of professional development. Being in the office is teaching you new things about your profession even if you haven’t noticed that while working as a full-time employee from the office.
Teaching yourself a new thing each day will make a difference in your profession as well as your way of thinking.
Benefits Of Working From Home
For any agency, People are the main asset, especially for digital marketing agencies. People are the only asset they have, that is why digital marketing agencies are often using the advantages of online work from home.
As the success of any digital marketing agency depends entity in the elite specialist they have, not on the pace they work in, but how they can create in a suitable environment, so if you are a digital marketing agency employee or employer, take a look at the advantage of working remotely below:
1- Increase Productivity
Although it may be true that working from the office may increase the productivity of the employee more than working from home, in reality, that belief is questionable.
Loud colleagues, interruptions from co-workers, idle chatter, meetings, they are catastrophic for productivity. So one of the main advantages of remote working is productivity increasing.
2- Money Saver, Of Course!
Whether you are an employee or an employer, working from home is a money saver for you no doubt!
For an employer: having employees coming every day to your office is expensive, you need to rent a bigger place and have equipment and supplies for them.
For an employee: commuting every day to work is a money sucker.
Online work from home has benefits for both employees and employers.
3- Flexibility
Flexibility improves quality.
Having the privilege to work from home, allows you to choose your own when and where to work.
You can manage your schedule however you want as it is very flexible, which will result in making you feel more relaxed and more in control hence improving the quality of your work.
Of course, there are some challenges associated with working from home and having employees working remotely, but if you manage to overcome these challenges, the benefits of working from home are truly substantial.
Disadvantages of Working From Home
As mentioned above, working remotely has a lot of benefits, there is nothing compared to being able to work freely by your own schedule from across the world. Online work from home is interesting, and exciting, but there is always another side to the story.
Since working remotely is a relatively new term, there is a lot of argument about it and it’s advantages:
1- Lack Of Communication
The privilege of having a quick meeting on spot with all your team members no longer exists.
This could lead to lack of communication between the employers and the employees as well as between the team members.
2- Low reliability
Working remotely is a skill that you should be looking for in your newly hired employers. You have to look for people who are not newly introduced to online work from home.
Look for people who have done it before, or have run their own businesses. These are great indicators of initiative and independence.
You don’t need to worry about your remote worker that they may disappear without a trace.
While working from home you may face some other distavenge of working remotely as:
- Problems with payment and logistics.
- Lack of productivity
- Boredom and Working slowly
- Slow WI-FI
Tools to use While Working from home
However, there are online tools that will make your working from home experience more bearable, some of these tools are designed for a solo- usage and there are some tools that you can use to connect with your team members, take a look at the list below.
Tools for communication:
- Zoom: You can use this tool for conference meetings with your team and your customers.
- Slack: it’s basically a chat platform for teams and individuals, and also has a video chatting option.
Other communication tools:
Time Management Tools
- Google Calendar: Google calendar is one of the best tools to manage schedules.
- I Done This: this website is used for status update manager.
- Pocket: it is mainly used as a save-for-later-reading application.
- RescueTime: it is a computer use tracker application.
- Toggl: used as a time tracker for projects.
Times are tough. And interesting. And strange. And yet still filled with opportunity, let’s make sure that this phase that all humanity is going through, is a significant time to change in our home and work lives and with each other and be more kind and compassionate.
Sources:
Working from home? 4 tips for staying productive
41 Work-From-Home Tips for Marketing Departments and Advertising Agencies