With working from home now being enforced upon many employees as a result of the spread of the Coronavirus, it’s impossible to know how long these measures will need to be implemented. Therefore, it’s vital that HR offer the right level of support to ensure that employees are happy, understand what is expected of them and feel able to do this, and that they are productive.

Keeping in touch

Sending everyone home to work doesn’t mean waving goodbye until whenever you next see them. Ensuring everything continues to run smoothly means keeping lines of communication open.

You need to establish who needs what level of support and information. Perhaps those who haven’t worked from home before might need support in ensuring they’re able to work efficiently.

If you usually have a regular team meeting, this should continue but in a different way – perhaps you can do it via Skype or other forms of group chat. It’s all about establishing what communication, equipment, tools and support people need to succeed at their job in this new environment.

Continue to manage

It’s much harder to manage an employee and their workloads/deadlines when they are working from home, so it’s important to establish methods of managing their performance. You should agree objectives and timeframes and keep in touch to check on progress.

Keep all employees updated

Where there is important information that needs to be shared with all employees, it’s important to ensure everyone gets it and that the message is clear. Employee confusion must be avoided and it’s important to ensure everyone is on the same page.

When people are working remotely it’s easy for some to miss the message or conversation, so it’s worth considering setting up group conversations via technology where everyone is part of the same chat.

Health and safety

If employees do not generally work from home, it may be that they do not have the facilities or set-up to work remotely. For those employees, it’s important to establish how and where the employee can work most safely. For example, sitting in your bed with a laptop isn’t most productive, nor is it recommended from a health and safety perspective. Employees should have some form of desk or workstation and suitable chair to ensure their health and safety.

As they would in the workplace, it should be recommended to employees that while they are working from home they should continue to take a lunch break and refreshment breaks.

Mental health

Mental health in the workplace is a widely discussed issue and many workplaces now have procedures in place to manage it, but dealing with the mental health of homeworkers is a whole different ball game and much harder to execute. Communication is therefore key – you should keep in regular contact with employees and it should be made clear to them who they should contact if they have any concerns.

Likewise, if employees have any other form of ill health they should know who to contact and what procedures to follow.