In today’s digital age the workplace is constantly evolving to meet the demands of employees, consumers, and most importantly to beat out the competition. These changes can take many forms, yet few have been as noteworthy and alluring as the concept of remote work. As more companies adopt remote work strategies more studies are performed on the numerous benefits of remote work offers both employees and companies themselves. Remote working is not a cure for a business’s internal issues, although it can potentially help to fix some issues like employee satisfaction and productivity. To help your marketing team make the most of remote work policies, we’re sharing three key tips on how to be successful while working remotely.
Treat Yourself To Breaks Throughout Your Day
Breaks are something that should be supported and not shunned or viewed with a negative connotation. It’s true that too many breaks in frequency or length are going to negatively impact work performance. Although, with proper scheduling and accountability, breaks can be a key factor in a productive day. In fact, studies have shown that scheduling breaks throughout the workday can help refresh and refocus your attention.
The term ‘remote work’ is synonymous with the phrase ‘working from home.’ When working from home you may find it to be nearly impossible to maintain complete focus on your work. The difficulty of maintaining attention to your work duties while working from home may encourage you to force yourself to focus and to avoid taking breaks. The reality is that such a practice is very unhealthy since it can increase mental stress and fatigue which can lead to burnout. In the age of remote working, it is time to throw away the stigmas around taking breaks, embrace the truth that breaks are beneficial and go get some fresh air.
Stop Working When Your Day Is Over
In many instances, remote work is accompanied with a flexible work schedule, which can be problematic if not properly managed. In the case of flexible schedules, you need to ensure that the hours you establish to be working hours are strictly adhered to. About 26% of workers, not just remote workers, struggle to ‘turn off the office’ when the day is over and carry their work home with them. Remote workers have an especially difficult time defining the boundaries of their working time and their home time since both locations are one and the same. A contributing factor to the blurred lines of work and home could be the desire to be seen as hard-working, which often means sending out just a few extra emails at the end of the day. A few emails become a few responses and before you know it you’ve spent a significant portion of, what should be your off-time, working. Usually, hard work is measured through results such as how many prospective customers you have contacted. Try to optimize your online content to attract prospects rather than trying to chase them after your work day has already ended. The same way it is unhealthy to force yourself to focus without a break, it’s unhealthy to have a poorly defined boundary between when you should be at work and when you should be relaxing at home.
Use Tools To Automate Mundane Tasks
In the workplace, regardless of whether it’s an office or your home, mundane and repetitive tasks are rarely considered a fulfilling aspect of any job. Research has shown that when a repeat task requires a lot of focus, each successive task is completed with less efficiency than the last. This compounding decline in efficiency is a major factor in becoming easily distracted and impacting your overall productivity. The answer isn’t as simple as to avoid those repetitive tasks because many of those tasks are a necessity of your job. The answer is to avoid wasting your focus on those tasks by implementing automation.
Automation implementation used to require some experience in coding and IT infrastructure that was geared specifically towards automation. In recent years, however, the technology has made significant improvements to become more accessible than ever before. Perhaps the most common and simple form of codeless automation for businesses today is known as RPA (Robotic Process Automation). Some tasks that would benefit from this form of automation include lead generation, customer lifetime value calculations, and generating reports. Just about any task that is repetitive and time-consuming can benefit from automation. This technology can save you the mental fatigue of actually performing the tasks yourself and thereby enabling you to simply monitor your digital workers to make sure everything is being done correctly while shifting most of your focus on more creative-minded tasks.
Implementing any or all of these tips should help you become a better remote worker. If you feel like you are still struggling with marketing, whether you are remote or not, contacting Millennium Agency can help you jumpstart or enhance your strategies and techniques.
About Millennium Agency
Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, leading woman led B2B brand, message positioning and digital marketing agency who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customers’ buying decisions, without being the lowest-price solution – giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the brand and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. Our process is proven, and we have the stats to share. To learn more about Millennium Agency, call 877.873.7445 or visit www.mill.agency.
