The Ultimate Guide to Managing Work from Home Employees

The Ultimate

Work

from Home

Guide

Everything you need to know to

setup and manage work from home

employees

Struggling to nd what

your work from home /

remote employees are

doing?

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The Ultimate Guide to Managing Work from Home Employees

Introduction

If you or your employees work from home (WFH), a co-working

space, coffee shop, or someplace else, this guide is for you.

In this guide, you will learn how to set up a quality workspace for

working from home, best practices to stay productive, how to hire

and manage remote employees. With this guide by your side, you

and your business will thrive by having the right people, processes,

tools and mindset for working from home.

We identi ed early the trend to hire remote employees and created

HiveDesk to help businesses that hire remote employees. Over the

years, we have learnt quite a bit about managing a remote team

from our customers as well as our own team. We created this

detailed work from home guide to share that knowledge and help

you succeed with remote employees.

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Work from home trends, bene ts & issues

The COVID-19 crisis has turned virtually every business into a

remote business. But even before the crisis, remote work had been

gaining popularity in software, outsourcing, ecommerce, marketing

agencies, design & law rms, accountants, architects and many

other service businesses.

Remote work or working from home has been growing in

popularity since the early 2010s. By 2019, 48% of US workers were

working remotely at least once per week, and 30% were full-time

remote workers.

The reason for this popularity is in the win-win proposition working

from home delivers to both business and employees. While

employees can better balance their work and life, business can

access critical talent, build employee loyalty and reduce cost.

These underlying bene ts, combined with the new found

acceptance for remote work, will lead to many businesses

continuing with the work from home practice even after the crisis is

over. Learning how to be productive and manage a remote team

are going to be crucial business skills for many of us.

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The right work from home mindset

Working from home is very different from working in of ce. There is

no manger looking over your shoulder. But it also means that you

can’t watch people reporting to you. There are no colleagues to talk

to and have lunch with. While work is the same, the work

environment is fundamentally different. You need a very different

mindset and thought process when working from home.

There is both time and peer pressure when you work in an of ce.

When you see others working, it both motivates and pressurizes

you to work harder. It’s very easy for someone to fall off the pace

when working from home as there is no one around to set the pace.

When you work in an of ce, you follow a routine that’s set by of ce

timings. In a work from home setup, there is no time pressure to get

ready and do things at a speci c time. You can create a work from

home schedule, but there is no one around to enforce it. You need a

lot more discipline and commitment when working from home.

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You also need to change the way you communicate with your team.

You need to become comfortable talking to people over phone and

computer. When you work in an of ce, you spend more time

meeting people at work than your family or neighbors. But it’s the

reverse when you work from home. It takes some time to get used

to it, but it’s easier than developing the discipline to complete your

work.

One area where you would experience a lot of differences is in

ideation and problem-solving process. When you are in of ce, you

can just walk up to others and bounce things off them. You get

many ideas during casual chat with co-workers.

But when you are working from home, you don’t have that luxury.

Of course you can call people to talk, but they may be busy and not

answer the call. So you need to think through issues a lot more

yourself instead of relying on others for help.

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The ideal work from home setup

You may think that setting up the home of ce is a straight forward

thing. Just push the table against a wall or window, get a chair,

hook up a computer and you are done. But if you really want to be

productive and effective, you need to put a lot more thought into

your work from home setup.

Location

The location of your work space in your home is critical to your work.

You need a space that’s relatively quiet and has enough space for a

comfortable setup. A room that has enough space and a door to

close off the noise can be used for home of ce.

Setup your desk where you can plug your computer and have

access to internet. Test your wi signal to make sure it’s strong

enough for video calls. If not, install a booster or get a LAN cable

from the router to the desk.

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Many people prefer to set up their desk against a window because

it gives a nice view. But the movement outside the window can be

distracting for many. If you set your desk against a wall, your voice

may re ect off the wall and create an echo during conference calls.

An easy way to stop that is to put a foam sheet against the wall.

Furniture

Use a chair that has adjustable height, good back support and

adjustable arm rests. It’s important to keep your feet at on the

ground and your hands rested on the arm chair or table to avoid

injuries. Your of ce furniture is designed for work, so it has all these

features. When setting up home of ce, you will need to take care

that table height is just right and chair is adjusted for your feet and

arms.

Hardware

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Ideally, you should use a laptop, not a desktop. A laptop gives you

the exibility to work from another room or desk in should the need

arise. A laptop has a built-in camera, so it’s less messy for video

calls.

While your computer may have an in-built microphone and

speaker, we recommend you use an external mic and speaker. If

you can, buy a Bluetooth mic and speaker combo. The built-in mic

and speakers are not good enough for calls.

Your computer screen should be level with your eyes. If you have to

look up or down on the screen, you will hurt your neck in a few

months. If you are using a laptop, consider buying a tilt stand. You

can adjust the height of the stand to ensure you look straight at the

screen. You may have to use an external mouse and keyboard if you

use a laptop stand.

Internet Connection

It goes without saying that you need a fast, at least 16 MBPS

dedicated, internet connection. Ideally, you should have a 50 MBPS

connection. In addition to that, you also need a backup connection

just in case your primary connection goes down. You can’t work

from home if you don’t have access to the internet. So you need a

backup connection also.

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The backup connection must be from a different internet provider

than the one that gives you the primary connection. It could be

cable, wireless internet or something else. Whatever it’s, it must be

fast enough to support video calling.

Software

You will obviously need access to all software and tools you need to

do your work. If you are using a company issued computer, it will

probably have all the software you need. If you use a SaaS product,

then you should have no issues.

If you need to access company’s server for storage, then you may

need secure access to the company’s network. Your IT team should

be able to help you with remote access to company servers and

data.

In addition to regular tools and software, you will also need the

following for communicating with your team, managing your time

and work:

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A video conferencing software like Zoom or Skype. We prefer Zoom

because of better quality and ease of use. You don’t need to connect

with anyone before joining a call with them. There is no latency, even

in the free plan. You can also use an image as your custom

background during Zoom calls. It’s really nice if you work from

home because you don’t need to worry about the mess behind you.

A task management tool like Trello or Asana to organize your work if

your o

ce does not use a project or task management tool. When

you work from home, you need to be extra careful about your

output. A task tracking tool is just the thing to get your work

organized and stay on top of everything.

A time tracking software like HiveDesk can help you keep track of

time you spend at work. Even if your company does not require you

to keep time, you will immensely bene t from using one. You can see

how much time you are working and how you are spending that

time. It will help you become more organized and make better use of

your time.

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Staying productive and e ective while

working from home

One advantage of working from home is that no one can walk up to

you and ask for help, start a chat or otherwise disturb you. You have

the exibility to set your working hours. But it’s also the most

dif cult part to master.

When you go to of ce, there is a morning ritual you go through that

mentally prepares you for the work. But the home environment

keeps you from getting into the grove, at least initially. So instead of

creating a new work schedule, we recommend you follow your

usual routine and get ready as if you are going to of ce. This will

make sure you start on time and puts you in work mode.

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During the rst few weeks, avoid working in pajamas even though

you may look at it as the best work from home reward. When you

put on your of ce wear, in your mind, you are getting ready to work.

It’s harder to get into that mode in pajamas. Once you have settled

into your new routine, you can try working in pajamas.

Staying t when working from home

When you work in of ce, by design, you will get up from your seat

and take a short break. These breaks are important because they

take you away from the screen and get you moving. These breaks

prevent back, neck and hand injuries that happen from

continuously working on a computer.

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When you work at home, you have to remember to take these

breaks. You can set an alarm in your phone to remind you to take

the break. Set the alarms at one-hour intervals. Some people

suggest more frequent breaks, but for many, anything less than an

hour is too disruptive. They tend to lose concentration and ow

when taking more frequent breaks.

During the break, get up from the desk and walk around. Look out

the window to give rest to your eyes. Stretch your back and legs to

relax them. It’s important to do these things if you want to avoid

injuries and stay productive.

Staying focused when working from home

Since no one is going to disturb you during the day, you can block

off time for different tasks and work on them with more focus. For

example, if you are a content writer, set up separate blocks of time

for research, writing and editing. This creates better focus and helps

you to nish work faster and better.

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TV and internet are big distractions when working from home. If

you invest in stocks, you will be tempted to watch market coverage

and interviews on business channels. If you are interested in politics,

you may be tempted to check your favorite TV station or news site.

When you work in of ce, you still have the same urge, but the

environment prevents you from overdoing it. You know that your

website usage is being tracked. Your manager can come to your

desk anytime and you don’t want to be caught reading or watching

news.

But when you work from home, no one is watching you or can see

what you are doing. So you need a way to manage this urge,

especially when you just start working from home. We strongly

recommend installing tools that block you from opening certain

sites.

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You can block your favorite websites through browser security

settings also you will not be able to access these sites at all. A better

alternative is to use a tool like StayFocusd that allows you to set

time limits for each website. When you cross that time limit, the site

is blocked. It’s an excellent tool to help you develop right habits

when working from home.

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Having trouble managing remote workers? You need this toolkit.

Toolkit for managing remote employees

Using the right toolkit for managing remote workers and work from

home employees is critical the success of remote teams.

Managing remote workers can be dif cult, especially for those

without experience. But even an inexperienced manager will

bene t from using the right toolkit – a combination of tools and

processes for managing remote workers.

Managing remote workers starts with hiring. If you hire the right

person, management becomes easier. Not everyone is cut out to be

a remote worker. If you hire the wrong person, you will struggle to

get anything done no matter how hard you try and which toolkit

you use.

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Onboarding is the next crucial step. This includes educating the

remote employee about your company, its products, processes, and

systems. Onboarding includes setting expectations about what you

expect from him, how you will evaluate and reward his

performance. A good onboarding process ensures that the remote

workers know what to do, how to do, and what to expect from you.

Once the remote worker starts working from home, you need a

process and a set of tools to manage the quality and quantity of his

output. The tools and process you use must match your

management style. If you are a delegator, you will be happy with

tracking just the results. But if you are detailed oriented, you may

want to see more details.

Let’s look at the toolkits for each stage in managing remote

workers:

Remote Worker Hiring Toolkit

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LinkedIn / Facebook Groups/Upwork/Reddit

These are great platforms for sourcing candidates.

LinkedIn is the ideal recruitment tool due to its global reach. You

can post the job opening on your pro le and in relevant groups. You

can also run recruitment ads on LinkedIn.

Facebook Groups is a great tool for sourcing candidates for remote

work. There are thousands of members in city or role speci c

Facebook groups across the world. Many members in Facebook job

groups are active freelancers. They are ideal for remote jobs since

they have the experience of working remotely and know how to

produce quality work.

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Upwork is a marketplace for freelancers and contractors. You can

nd a freelancer or remote worker for almost any role you want to

ll. Upwork is project based and charges you a hefty fee for using its

services.

Many entrepreneurs post a small project on Upwork to nd and test

remote employees. Once they nd someone they like, they hire

them directly to cut out the fee that can be as high as 12-15% of the

contract value. You are better off investing the savings in other tools

you would need for managing the remote team.

Zoom / Skype: A video calling tool like Zoom or Skype is ideal for

interviewing remote workers. It’s a great way for you to look for

visual clues during the interview and to test the home of ce setup

of the applicant. A good of ce setup with dependable internet is

one of the basic requirements for a remote worker. The video

interview helps you test both.

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Zoom is a Video Conferencing and Web Conferencing software. It

enables up to 50 participants on a video conference for free! (Skype

limits it to 10).

If you need to hold an online meeting with more than ten remote

workers, try Zoom. For $15 a month (or no charge if you can keep

your meeting to less than 40 minutes), you can add up to 25 people

to a meeting. Zoom works on your mobile device and supports HD

video and audio.

User Review – Eddie Hanson at Transportation:

“This easy to use, easy to deploy and easy to manage application

has saved our agency time and money compared to our old video

conferencing solution.”

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Skype

Skype is a communication and collaboration tool that combines

video, voice and text chat. Skype keeps you connected with the

entire team for free. If your team size is small, Skype can be a great

communication tool from communicating with remote team

members. You can include up to 9 people in a call.

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You can also buy Skype credits or subscription to call others on their

phone or forward calls to your phone. In any business, there are

times when you need to take out the phone and call someone up

directly. Skype credit can be handy for those situations. It can cut

down your long distance and international calling costs

signi cantly.

Pricing for Skype business starts at $2.50 user/month.

User Review – Patrick Clements at SherpaDesk:

“Great for inter of ce communication. We use Skype to handle

communication with our virtual team. It’s been a fantastic tool to

screen share, pop on a call or get some quick feedback on a

question.”

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Applicant Tracking System/O365/G Suite: You will need a tool to

track applications you receive the candidates’ progress through

your hiring process. Ideally, you need an applicant tracking system

(ATS) like Zoho Recruit to mage the hiring process.

If you don’t want to spend on an ATS, you can use Excel or Google

Sheets to keep track of candidates during the selection process.

Create a spreadsheet where you can keep candidate details, your

observations and comments. Upload the resume to G

Drive/Onedrive and save the link in the tracking spreadsheet. This

acts like your own document management tool and helps you stay

organized during the selection process.

Google Apps

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Google Apps is a suite of productivity applications hosted in the

cloud. You can create spreadsheets, documents and presentations

that are stored in the cloud. Since everything is stored in the cloud,

it can be easily accessed by anyone from anywhere, making it a

great t for teams with remote workers. Managing Google docs is

easy – you can restrict access to people using their Gmail. The best

part- it’s free. You can even host your business email with Google

but it ain’t free.

If you are managing remote teams, Google Apps is one tool you

cannot ignore.

User Review – Derek R:

“Gmail is pretty much the perfect email client, and I’m sure most of

you have used it. Either for your personal email, work email, or

school email.

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Everything is customizable, which means you can make it just how

you like it. You even get themes to customize the background and

the text and stuff. They recently added CSS support for custom

themes that you write yourself.

Google Docs is pretty much the only online of ce suite, so I can’t

nd any reason not to recommend it. Good collaboration tools, easy

to use, etc. It’s a Google product, it works.”

Of ce 365

Of ce 365 is a Microsoft product. It’s your favorite suite of Microsoft

of ce products, offered as a web based service You can access all

popular Of ce tools such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

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With Of ce 365, you also get 1TB of online storage for each user to

store les and data. Each license allows you to use Of ce365 on

desktop / laptop, mobile phones and tablets. You can activate up to

three devices for each user making applications and les available

seamlessly across the devices.

It’s an easy way to make sure all your remote workers have access

to the same software. The online storage allows for easy

collaboration between team members irrespective of their physical

location.

Pricing starts at $ 7.38 per user/month.

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User Review – David A at NoBlue:

“The ease of access and single version approach that this brings.

Microsoft have nally made sense of the ongoing subscription and

upgrade process. All of your favorite of ce admin tools at your

ngertips.”

Toolkit for Onboarding Remote Employees

Process.st: Process Street is an excellent tool for creating work ows

and documenting processes. They even have a bundle of most

popular process templates that you can download for free from

Appsumo. While it may seem like too much to document a process

when hiring the rst remote worker, you will see its value as you

expand your team.

If you need some inspiration, look at this nice collection of best

practices in onboarding remote employees by Remote.co.

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You will also use Zoho/Skype to talk to the new hire during

onboarding. You will set up the employee in your HR/Payroll

software during onboarding. If you hire a full-time employee in the

US, there may be other legal compliance to take care of during

onboarding. If you are hiring a contractor or part-time employee,

then you will have less stuff to do during onboarding.

Onboarding is the best time to train the new hire about your

culture, work ethics, process, tools and expectations. You can create

training videos, documents and checklists to make sure the new

hire is correctly onboarded. If you have a larger team, you can also

set up a learning management system (LMS) for your employees.

Toolkit for Managing Remote Workers

Once the new worker starts working, you need tools to assign work,

track progress, generate timesheets, manage the payroll,

communicate with the worker and facilitate work.

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Project/Task Management Tool: A project or task management tool

is a basic requirement for assigning and managing tasks to remote

workers. There are several tools that would do the job depending on

the work and level of detail you want.

Asana:

Asana is one of the most popular and easiest tools for project and

task management. You can organize to-do lists, projects & meeting

information, conversations, and emails in an easy-to-read

dashboard. Team members can stay on top of all information

allowing you to quickly identify issues that need your attention.

Asana is especially useful for keeping your remote workers or

contractors on the same page with the rest of the team. Asana is

free for teams up to 15 members. You can access to all features like

data export and additional dashboards by upgrading to paid plan.

Learn how to use Asana for project management with our detailed

guide.

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User Review – Steve R at BRUNNE:

“I absolutely love the user interface – it’s pretty seamless across

mobile, tablet and desktop. It’s pretty intuitive to the average non

PMP-certi ed person. Drag and drop allows me to easily merge or

separate personal and work tasks. Of course, it’s fast and free so

that always helps.”

Basecamp

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Basecamp is one of the most popular an easy to use project

management and communication tools around. It claims to have

over 100,000 customers of varying sizes. It has a web based

interface for project, task & time management, team collaboration

and reporting. It eliminates the need for teams to have separate

tools for project management and communication. Everything is

accomplished inside Basecamp.

Basecamp can signi cantly reduce the complexity of managing a

team of remote workers.The rst project is free but if you want to

set up a second one, pricing starts at $29/month.

User Review – Kit Mullins at Jemully Medias:

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“Works fabulously! As a business owner, I love the easy way

Basecamp coordinates tasks, communications, and project

calendars while integrating with Tickspot – our time keeping app. I

like the overview of all projects, or tasks. I can look at assigned tasks

from the perspective of the project, from the perspective of the user

the tasks are assigned to, or from the perspective of the due date.

We currently use Basecamp 2 and have signed up for Basecamp 3

which offers even better team support and functionality.

Custom Templates for project creation. Email directly to a project.

File storage, text docs, tasks, and discussions all in the same project.

Fantastic customer help/support. Quick and informative.”

Trello

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Trello is a project management tool that makes collaboration fun

and makes it easy to manage remote workers. Ditch the sticky

notes, spreadsheets and email for managing your projects, hook on

to Trello. It allows you to add as many boards and people as you

want with your free account.

Pricing for business plan for App integrations, team overviews, and

security starts at $ 8.33 per User/ Month

User Review – Pall Musaev tells:

“I love the visual nature of Trello and how easy it is to manage tasks

and assignments. I use it on a personal and business level and like

how both can meld into one interface. Very visual and easy to use.

User experience is good”

Time and cost tracking tools:

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While excellent tools for tracking project progress, project

management tools don’t track time your remote workers spend on

the projects. Depending on your business, tracking time may or

may not be high on your agenda. If you bill clients by the hour, you

de nitely want to track time your employees spend on each client

project. If your remote workers are contractors or part-time

employees, you need to track their time for payroll. Tracking time

also builds a good database for you to use in estimating time for

future projects.

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HiveDesk

HiveDesk is a popular software for managing remote workers and

virtual teams. It is a time tracking software with screenshots,

activity levels and productivity reports. It has a simple, intuitive user

interface to easily manage your projects, assign tasks, track time

and even grab screenshot of worker’s computers.

HiveDesk provides a platform that makes it easier for businesses to

manage remote staff. Employees can check-in remotely and

HiveDesk will log their work sessions. It makes sure that you get the

desired level of productivity.

For outsourcing companies it’s a great tool for both employee

monitoring as well as for backing up invoiced hours. Many digital

marketing agencies use HiveDesk to manage remote workers and

contractors. HiveDesk provides complete transparency to

their clients and builds trust in their services.

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User Review – Phil from Brickman Group:

“I think the product is exceptional. It will optimize work from

different aspects and bring employees together easier. I would most

de nitely use this product.”

Team communication tools

Timely and transparent communication is critical to the success of

remote workers. It builds trust, loyalty and motivates employees to

give their best. Frequent communication keeps your entire remote

team on the same page and helps identify issues before they

become a big problem. You will need both synchronous and

asynchronous communication tools.

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A synchronous tool requires everyone to be connected and present

at the same time like a team video call. It’s a great way to build

team bonding and discuss issues. But it’s not always workable if

your employees work in different time zones. Zoom/Skype are

probably the best synchronous communication tools for managing

remote teams.

An asynchronous communication tool is great for such situations.

People can post and respond to messages whenever they are

available. This works very well for non-time sensitive issues, quick

chat or end of day updates.

Slack

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Slack is perhaps the most popular and effective asynchronous

communication tool for distributed teams. Slack is a team

messaging app.

It’s great for any team but more so for teams with remote

employees or contractor. It brings all your communication into one

place and integrates with your tools you already use. Setting up

Slack is easy and using it is even easier. It’s your virtual of ce and

using Slack is like sitting in a room with your team members.

User Review – Andrew M. at CSPO:

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“Slack functions like my own personal Command Centre. We can

chat, I embed/upload les, and I have integrations with the other

services I use, such as JIRA and GitHub that allows me to see what’s

going on with the requirements I enter and what deployments /

pulls happen when. Additionally, we also use it for fun with a Twitter

integration where we follow the various food trucks from around

the city to help the dev team determine where they want to go to

lunch.”

HR/Payroll tools

You need a HR and payroll system for managing your team. Even

with a small team of contractors, you need to do some compliance

work such as generating 1099. You can use PayPal Payouts to make

it easy to pay multiple remote workers and keep your costs low. This

works best if you have part-time workers.

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With full-time workers, you will need a HR software like Gusto to

take care of taxes, unemployment insurance and other compliance

issues. You can also outsource it to your accountant or a payroll

professional.

If you hire international remote workers like so many other US

businesses do, you can use Transferwise or PayPal to pay them. A

tool like HiveDesk is useful in paying hourly workers as you can

generate online timesheets using tracked hours.

International remote workers prefer Transferwise because it offer a

better conversion rate compared to PayPal and also has lower

service charge. We also put together a blog on how to pay remote

workers that you will nd helpful.

Besides these, you will also need a few collaborative tools like

Dropbox for storing, sharing and working on les.

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Dropbox

Dropbox is very easy to use, and it’s very likely that the person you

hire may be using it. So there won’t be any training or setup

overhead.

Whether you want to keep your personal les in one place or share

les with your global team, Dropbox is your solution. Files on

Dropbox are backed up and synced which can be accessed from

desktop, mobile or laptop. Your important data and documents are

always with you for free, up to 2 GB of storage or upgrade to a pro

version with 1 TB storage for $9.99 /User a month.

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User Review – Brian Lawrence at CTI Clinical Trial and Consulting:

“Dropbox is the Best Way to Store Documents. I have been using

Dropbox for many years, and i love the ease and versatility of it. The

ability to save documents and easily access them from any of my

devices, smartphone, tablets, work or home computer is awesome.

It is easy to organize with folders however you would like and to

search.”

Depending on the work, you way need some additional, specialized

tools like GitHub for managing code.

GitHub

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Github is a software project management tool speci cally suited for

small and distributed software development teams. You can

manage versions of source code, create wiki for knowledge sharing

and use the built-in ticketing system for bug tracking.

There is a free version but you should take a paid plan unless you

are working on an open source project you want to share with the

world. Your remote developers from anywhere in the world can

check-in their code or access code written by others. You can use

the wiki to make sure everyone in the team has the correct

information and knowledge to work on the project. The ticketing

system allows you to effectively manage the entire project in

GitHub by creating and tracing tickets for tasks and bug xing.

You can also integrate GitHub with third party tools, from project

management to continuous deployment, for building software in a

way that works best for you. It can be accessed on Windows

Desktop, Mac & Mobile.

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Pricing starts at $10/month for up to 10 users.

User Review – Marc Morel at groupe Green & Biz / Remade In

France:

“Best code sharing tool for open source project. Github is a state-ofthe-art

git-hosting service (well, actually they invented that

concept). Very easy to use, to collaborate and to host code. Nice

interface and well-documented features”

Make sure you have these tools setup properly so you can enable

your remote team to perform at its best.

Once you have a few employees, it will make sense to buy a

Process Street subscription to automate some of your

administrative tasks. This is especially helpful for managing remote

workers working in different locations and time zones. The time and

hassle you save will be much more than the cost of the software.

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While it may seem like you need many tools, processes and some

discipline for managing remote workers, bene ts of hiring remotely

make it worth it. The best people don’t live in one place. So hiring

remotely can give your business an advantage because you can

hire the best across the world.

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Best practices for working from home

Working in of ce is normal. You get up, rush through morning

chores, get dressed and drive to work. You punch in or swipe your

card and get to work. Through the day, you attend some meetings,

take coffee breaks and talk to your friends and colleagues. Maybe

you go out to meet clients. At the end of the day, you drive back

home.

But it's very different when working from home. You don't have to

follow a xed routine and you don't have the usual support

ecosystem around you. Your manager still expects the same

productivity and quality of work but does not have much visibility

into it. It can lead to anxiety for the manager and too much

oversight for the employee.

These best practices will help both individuals and managers stay

productive and effective when working from home.

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1. Have the right work from home setup

When you work in of ce, you take the setup for granted. Someone

makes sure you have the right desk, chair, network connection,

computer and access to software. Of ce has meeting rooms for you

to use.

But when working from home, you need to take care of everything.

While it can be challenging at rst, it’s not dif cult. We have put

together a

guide for the ideal work from home setup for you. It

explains how to select the ideal work place in home, tools and

software to work effectively from home.

2. Follow a set schedule

Most people love the exibility that comes with working from home.

While it’s true that you can chose when to work and when to rest, it

also adds more responsibility.

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When you work from home, your manager (or client) cannot see

what you are doing. That brings anxiety, and to some extent,

mistrust. You need to be disciplined and stay productive to assure

them that you are not spending time binge watching Net ix or

playing games.

One of the best ways to do that is to follow your regular work

schedule. If your normal schedule is 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, stick to the

same when working from home. Your manager may call you more

than once during the day to check if you are working. While it’s not

the best way to manage remote teams, be patient and pick up the

phone. Understand that your manager is also going through a

period of uncertainty and trying to adjust to this new way of

working.

Following your usual schedule is good for you also. Over the years,

you have trained yourself to focus on work during this time. Change

in your work place is a big thing. Try adjusting to that rst before

you make any other change to your work life.

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3. Plan your work and stick to your plan

Planning your work is de nitely a good practice, whether you

telecommute or work in of ce. You can plan your day on a piece of

paper, to-do list on your phone or a software. It really does not

matter how you plan it as long as you do it.

One of the advantages of telecommuting is that you have more

control over how you spend your time. No one is going to stop by

your desk to chat or discuss anything. There are far fewer

distractions when working from home. If you use this exibility well,

you can become far more productive than you can ever be in an

of ce.

Block off your time in slots to focus on different tasks. Of course, you

will get unexpected calls, some of which you must attend. But

overall, you will be able to focus on a given task much longer and

accomplish more by blocking off time slot for each task.

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4. Dress for work even when working from home

Not having to dress up for of ce is considered one of the biggest

perks of working from home. You can work in shorts, pajamas or

anything else. But it’s not always the best option.

We are creatures of habit and environment. Our surroundings and

ambience have a big impact on how we behave. That’s why we get

into the work mode when we reach of ce and rest mode as soon as

we enter home.

Our dress has a big psychological impact. Putting on work clothes is

the rst step towards getting ready for work. We have trained

ourselves like that over the years. That’s why we recommend you

put on of ce clothes in the morning.

Doing so would mentally prepare you to start working. If you stay in

home clothes, you may nd it harder to get started and stay

focused on work, at least initially.

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5. Track work and time

When you start telecommuting or start managing a remote team

for the rst time, you should use a time tracking tool. Even if your

company does not require you to keep time, you will immensely

bene t from using one.

You can see how long you are working and how you are spending

that time. It will help you become more organized and help you

make better use of your time.

It will also help you see how your team members spend their time

and how to improve their work practices.

You can try HiveDesk time tracker for free for 14 days.

6. Manage output, not activity

Some organizations and managers get bogged down by measuring

activity of remote employees. Since they cannot see the employee,

they get anxious and want to know what the employee is doing.

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Most tools for managing remote employees track keyboard

activities and applications used. In some cases, that may be

required or be suf cient for tracking work from home employees.

But it’s not the best practice for most businesses. You are better off

measuring output, not input or activities.

For example, if you are managing a team of remote developers, you

are better off tracking output (features completed / bugs xed) than

tracking keyboard activities. If you are managing a team of blog

writers, track the number and quality of blogs, not how much time

writers spend on Facebook or Twitter.

7. Use video when meeting with team members

When we work in of ce, we see each other all day. Seeing helps

build familiarity and team bonding. But it falls apart when everyone

is working from home. That’s why it’s important to use video when

we are in an online meeting. Seeing each other, even if a couple of

times a week, reinforces the team bonding.

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There are plenty of good video conferencing tools today that you

can use. Most have a free plan that allow for a limited number of

participants ( Skype) or meeting time ( Zoom). If those limits don’t

work for you, you can switch to a paid plan.

8. Don’t let work a ect your home life (and vice versa)

Of ce provides a natural break between our work and personal

lives. The environment and people around us constantly remind us

to focus on work. When we reach home, we naturally switch off

from work. At least most of us do.

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Working from home removes that natural separation between work

and home. So you need to deliberately manage these two. The best

way to do that is to have a xed work schedule. Whether you stick

to the same schedule that you had in of ce or create a different one

is not important. What is important is you have a schedule and stick

to it.

In the same way, avoid doing non-urgent personal chores during

work time. Don’t go out for lunch with your spouse or to play a

round of golf in the afternoon on workdays.

9. Take breaks to stretch and reboot

When we work in of ce, we tend to take frequent breaks. We walk

up to co-workers to have a chat, pantry to have coffee or cooler to

ll up the water bottle. Many of us go to gym on the way to or from

of ce.

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When we work at home, we lose that momentum. The comfort of

the home keeps us there. We don’t need frequent breaks when

working from home, so we keep sitting at the desk for longer

periods. It’s not healthy.

One of the best practices to keep yourself t is to take frequent

breaks to stretch and relax. Set a timer to take a break every hour.

Get up from your seat when the alarm goes off. Stretch your arms

and legs. Focus on in nity to relax your eyes.

If you like going to gym, join one that is close to your home. Slot a

time for it in your daily schedule so you don’t skip it.

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How to measure productivity of employees

working from home

If your employees work from home or from a remote location, you

need a system to measure their productivity. There are many

reports that suggest employees working from home or a remote

location are more productive than those working in of ce. But how

do you know if your remote employees being productive?

We talked to 12 business leaders to learn how they monitor

productivity of their work from home employees. You will learn a lot

of practical tactics to implement in your business.

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Nathan Olsen, CEO of BestNotes:

20% of our employees work remotely and the rest have the option

to do so. The best way to keep employees engaged is to frequently

discuss the value of productivity and getting deep work

accomplished through the day. This has helped employees feel like

their work was meaningful and have a sense of accomplishment.

Another helpful tool for keep employees accountable and engaged

is a company wide Trello board. The online Trello board shows what

each employee is working on, so there is complete transparency in

the volume of work getting done.

Brandon Ackroyd, Founder of Tiger Mobiles:

I do it by organizing tasks that have a clearly de ned start, middle

and end points. If my remote staff have clear deliverable, it’s easy

for me to judge their output volume and quality. If remote staff are

under performing, you have a management issue, and no piece of

technology is going to solve it.

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We currently use Trello and Telegram. I’m reasonably happy with

those tools, but for speci c tasks where I bring in remote workers on

short term contracts, I would like a tool that lets me know which

team members are online right now, how long they were online for

last and which projects/tasks they are working on in real time.

Alexander Romanov, iwillbuyhouse.com

I am a co-founder of a real estate investment company in Seattle,

WA.

All of our full-time employees work remotely and ful ll diverse

functions in our business: acquisition analysis, inbound lead

processing, web marketing, invoice processing, business analysis,

and bookkeeping.

The reason we hired remote workers is because of the complexity

and cost of hiring full-time on-site employees in the US. A bad

hiring decision of a full-time worker can result in signi cant

nancial and time losses; this risk is much smaller with remote

contractors.

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To measure productivity of our remote staff, we use an activity

monitoring software which tracks mouse movements and keyboard

strikes. This is the baseline data, which we use to track employee

activity level.

We monitor a list of KPIs for each function which our business

analyst records in a custom built Google sheet. Depending on the

function we have 5-10 KPIs for each team member and we monitor

their performance against set goals.

Sean Patrick Hopwood, CEO & President of Day Translations:

We’re an international language service provider. All our employees

work remotely, from all parts of the world.

We hire remote workers because we truly believe that people work

better when they’re in the comfort of their home, when they can

manage their time adequately, and are motivated to work for a

company that allows such exibility.

We measure productivity in different ways:

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Every single employee uses a Timer

Second, every day every employee sends a report to our Senior

Executive Manager, who sends these reports to the pertinent

manager by the end of each week. This way, managers can follow up

with the employees regarding the goals for the department and the

strategies that are being implemented weekly.

Each team uses a separate software for productivity: our PMs use

Slack, our developers use JIRA, and our Marketing team uses Asana.

This is how managers can supervise the daily tasks of the employees

according to each separate project.

Wooten Gough, Community Manager, Remote-how, Inc:

At Remote-how we are exclusively an all-remote staff that is

medium sized.

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We use a few different digital tools for communicating,

collaborating, and of course, tracking the progress of all of our

projects. We use shared project management tools such as Google

Drive for collaboration, Twist for communication, and Asana to

create, delegate, and complete tasks.

These tools work well for our team because everything is public to

the entire staff. Asana is particularly helpful due to its feature to

include deadlines and followers on tasks, and the ability to add

tasks to on-going, larger projects.

Seeing the day to day progress of the work, as opposed to the time

spent each day, allows us all to know the status of any project we

are working on at any time; which is great if you are working on

several projects like we are!

Misha Kaura, CEO, Darlinghurst Enterprises

I have a 95% remote workforce at my startup, Darlinghurst

Enterprises remote contractors who work on a per-project basis.

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I implemented a master Google Docs spreadsheet accessible to the

entire team 24/7 where people assigned to individual projects pick

what they want to work on. Each project has an estimated time

attached, e.g., ve hours, and contractors who complete before the

general time frame are judged as more productive.

These percentages are converted to an A-F scale, with A’s awarded

to those who complete their work under budget, before the time

allocated. All contractors are ranked based on their performance

and their rank is published on the spreadsheet with identi cation

by employee numbers.

As well, four A’s in a row means the worker gets a bonus based on a

percentage of their base pay. Doing away with salaries and paying

based on completed project milestones helps tremendously

because people have incentive to work faster.

We use the standard milestone tools on Upwork as well as the

master Google Docs spreadsheet. We also recently got Monday.com

for our project management, but the old fashioned spreadsheet

works well right now because each employee—identi ed by

number—can see where they rank in terms of A’s. Ranking people

by number puts them in a competitive mindset to move up the

ranks.

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All of the remote workers do marketing and sewing. I hire them

because it’s more cost-effective for an almost entirely bootstrapped

company and because I think it’s good to have a female workforce

addressing a female demographic. I’m completing a venture capital

fundraising round and will hopefully be able to hire more remote

workers on a salaried basis in the near future.

Sean, CEO of SEO Hacker:

Since the start of SEO Hacker almost a decade ago, we’ve employed

a number of remote employees. All of them would either be

Content Writers or Link Builders. We use a time tracking software to

measure their productivity and hours worked. But this is only when

we experience a problem with their output.

This gives you an idea about how we measure their performance.

The time tracking tool is only used in case we want to investigate

why they were not able to nish what was asked from them, but

the main gauge is whether they nish their assigned workload for

the timeframe that we gave them.

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Nate Masterson, CEO of Maple Holistics:

We like to have as many of our employees as possible working in

the of ce, but for a variety of reasons, we do have remote workers

as well.

We used to monitor everyone’s productivity through an application

which can track mouse movements and websites visited to

determine an employee’s productivity. However, we noticed that it

doesn’t always give an accurate description of a worker’s

productivity, as mouse movements are not the only way to gauge if

someone is working hard.

Therefore, we now also ask employees to track on their timesheets

how long it takes them to work on various tasks. The idea is that we

can better track productivity to make sure that employees in similar

positions are performing the same, and it also helps us get a better

idea of training ef cacy for new employees.

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Grant Hensel, CEO of Nonpro t Megaphone

We are a digital marketing agency focused 100% on Google Grant

management and acquisition for nonpro ts.

Our company is entirely remote. Since we are a marketing agency,

we bene t from the fact that the results of nearly everything we do

is measurable. We track these outcomes through a Scorecard,

which is simply a Google Sheet with our most critical numbers and

the people responsible for them.

We update this weekly as a team. This ensures accountability for

results while giving our team the freedom and trust to gure out

how to accomplish the goals themselves.

A remote culture requires investing a lot more time upfront to

make sure you are only hiring incredibly bright, motivated, missionaligned

people. But once you have the team in place, you can worry

a lot less about looking over their shoulder and a lot more about

helping them get the results that we all want to see.

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Hamna Amjad, Community Manager at Gigworker.com:

Gigworker is a media outlet focused on the gig economy. It’s an allremote

company whose employees are all working remotely from

multiple countries. The remote workers that we hire include

freelance content writers, content marketers, and digital marketers.

We mainly use a time tracking software for time-tracking and

measuring the productivity levels of our employees. It helps us in

analyzing how much time is spent on each project by every team

member. Moreover, it takes screenshots of their screens while it’s

active. That way, we can monitor their work, if required.

However, we don’t rely on this alone to assess the performance of

our employees. Because it’s useless if your employees are just

completing their assigned hours but not delivering results. Hence,

we like to have a more result-oriented approach in our company.

We like to assign our team members certain tasks to be completed

in a day. At the end of the day, we check if the tasks were

completed and how much

time was spent on each task. We believe that you need to take into

account both the results and the time, to get the overall picture of

productivity.

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Since most of our remote employees are writers and marketers, we

like to monitor how many articles are written or how many pitches

are sent per day.

We keep track of their progress using Google Spreadsheets where

each employee can enter tasks nished and the amount of time

taken to achieve that.

Earl White, Co-founder of House Heroes LLC:

We are a real estate investment company that purchases houses,

land, apartments across Florida – as well as in New Jersey,

California, and Texas. Our team is completely remote.

Our company monitors remote employees using thoughtfully

designed “objectives and key results” (OKR) for each employee. Our

OKRs are designed to target the desired outcome. For our company,

the overarching objective is to generate leads that convert into

clients that turn into revenue.

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Lead generation staff is judged by how many quality leads were

generated. Employees that work on converting those leads are

judged by their lead conversion rate. Management is judged by

revenue off those conversions. The beauty of intelligent OKRs is

once you set up an intelligent goal structure you can directly

pinpoint the phase where a problem lies.

Our company does still track hours worked and activities

completed. This data is useful – not as a judge of productivity – but

to help assess if a goal was set too low, why a goal was not reached,

and for comparing employees to identify areas for individual

improvements.

Vivek Chugh, Founder and CEO of a Listables:

Listables is a collaborative checklist app that helps everyone from

teams to individuals do more, be more and accomplish more.

Much of our team and myself work remotely and for us the key to

measuring productivity is

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1. Discussing and agreeing on expectations

2. Choosing measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

If you have an understanding of what is expected and know how

you are measuring success with the chosen KPI’s, it really then

comes down to paying for results as opposed to time.

For example, much of our marketing team works remotely.

However, throughout a given month they have certain deliverable

and KPI’s they need to increase. Like how many in uencers we are

working with and how many new users we have acquired that

month. If those numbers are lacking, something is off, or someone

is not doing their job well.

For measuring our KPI’s we use different tools but our results are

gathered all on one dashboard called Raventools. We have up to

this point been very happy with the results and how our team

works to grow our company.

The last tip I would give to measure remote worker productivity is,

either understand the task or job you need to be completed, or get

some guidance on what the job entails. This way you can

understand what the performance should look like, how many

hours a job should take and so on.

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Additional Resources

You should also read these additional resources to improve the

performance of your remote or work from home team.

The work from home mindset

How to Ask for Feedback: The Ultimate Guide to Relevant Feedback

How HR can build a feedback culture with remote teams

How to lead a remote team effectively

How to keep remote employees motivated

Page 70

Need a tool to

manage your remote

/ work from home

employees?

Try HiveDesk

today!

The Ultimate Guide to Managing Work from Home Employees

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