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Working Remotely - It Really Works

​Helpful Information: Guide For Operating A Business While Working From Home

How to keep up with rapidly changing business models, the importance of safety precautions and insurance coverage flexibility in order to successfully run a business during the pandemic.

https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/homeowners-insurance/home-business-tips-coronavirus

Therapeutic Baking

Interest in baking is seeing a resurgence not seen since 100 years ago, when modern style cookbooks, specialized kitchen utensils and quality ingredients become widely available to many home bakers. 100 years ago, uncertainties people were dealing with included World War I and the flu pandemic of 1918. During those times, people found comfort in familiar routines including cooking and baking.
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​How To Stay Motivated - Staying On Track When Your Work and Home Lives Converge

Face it, It’s a real challenge to get into a new routine, especially when you are thrown into one suddenly with little time to prepare.  For most of us, even though working from home seems like it should be less stressful, it can feel more stressful as needs and expectations of work and home life come together and constantly compete for our attention and focus.  
Hey, you’re not alone at all.  The fact is, most people need structure in order to feel secure and enable them to effectively focus and perform consistently.  Not having a familiar structure, like going into work every day at the office, can feel like not having a sturdy floor to stand on.
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​Why Virtual Meetings Can Be More Productive Than Face To Face Meetings

It’s interesting, despite all the early challenges with setting up and figuring out how to use teleconferencing tools, online meetings have quickly evolved into very efficient results oriented events which produce more value per hour than the old fashioned low tech face to face meetings.  Yes, there will always be challenges with network interruptions and computers that are slow and bugs in software, but overall the results after just one month focused solely on virtual meetings shows that we have advanced to being much more productive.  Based on what criteria?  Here are some key observations, you be the judge.

The Virtual Engineer - What I Learned (by Necessity) In the Last 4 Weeks  And How I’ve Become More Efficient

Plunging into the deep end of remote work has been an extreme paradigm shifting experience. Being an engineer supporting manufacturing operations, working from home in my circles has always been viewed as play-working and has been strongly discouraged as a lazy person’s way to get out of really putting in the effort to be productive.  Now in 2020, given no other choice these same organizations have suddenly fully embraced remote work as a lifeline to keep things running while the world gets itself back together.  As someone who has long sought an at least partial remote opportunity, this experience is not just that the glass is half full but it is overflowing.  This is a chance to challenge the creative skills to prove this works and, even to my surprise, after one month I have found that this has worked out even better than I anticipated.  In addition there are many new skills that I have learned and/or sharpened which can be very useful well into the future.  These include everything from learning new software to new ways to stay motivated and new ways to be organized.  All of these have actually improved my productivity as I have noticed as I am checking off completion of key project deliverables which I could never seem to get to while in the office.  Out of every challenge comes a valuable learning opportunity, and here are some of the most valuable I have learned.

Now Is Your Time  - To Prove Just How Effective You Can Be Working From Home

In the midst of all the uncertainty, fear and confusion going on right now in the world, it is important to hold onto the things that are within your control and and focus on what you can do right now to lift yourself up and look forward to a brighter and better future.
You’ve always wanted to be able to work from home or work remotely right?  But most organizations have been very resistant to allowing remote work because remote workers are viewed as less productive or lazy or just taking a vacation and pretending to work (translation “If we can't see you and look over your shoulder, we don’t trust you to be responsible”).

But now all the rules have suddenly changed.  No, this isn’t the way that I or anyone would have ever wanted it to be, but since we are forced to be in this situation anyway, why not use this opportunity (if we can call it that) to prove that working remotely from home really does work and it works very well.  

Benefits to the Employer of Working From Home

Here are some of the real benefits to organizations (not just employees) that real companies are currently looking at:
  • Real estate savings in the $Millions from not having to maintain as many offices and buildings.
  • Employees working on average up to 5 or more additional hours per day since access to work is so easy at home and there is less stress and fatigue and wasted time commuting and getting stuck in traffic or caught in transit delays.
  • Employees having higher morale and willing to work harder and longer without expecting more money (many employees are willing to take a cut in pay in exchange for the flexibility to work remotely, even part of the time).
  • Geographic diversity, being able to recruit the talent needed without regard for location, willingness to relocate and relocation costs.
  • Inexpensive compliance with Americans With Disabilities Act, versus constructing appropriate accommodations within a company facility.
  • Reduced discrimination, people are evaluated based on what they can do rather than what they look like.
  • Remote meetings are shorter and more to the point so things get done efficiently and less time is wasted in excessive chatter and going off on tangents.
  • Enables effective Business Continuity Planning (BCP), without reliance on a specific location to be able to operate. The decentralized nature of working from home enables work to continue at multiple locations, even in the event of a disaster which stops work on some locations.
Bottom line: Working From Home really works and is not a way for employees to take a prolonged vacation and skip out on real work.  Management still needs to provide structure and set appropriate goals with the objective of evaluating people's performance by what they get done.

​Business Continuity Plan (BCP) Template With Instructions and Example

A BCP will enable you to plan ahead, because you want to stay in business in the event that an unforeseen disaster or emergency happens that interrupts your business operations. In situations such as this, you want to know clearly what needs to be done to keep business running. You need to be prepared so that panic does not cause you to make inappropriate and ineffective decisions which will hurt your business.

The BCP plan provides a clear roadmap of what to do, when to do it, and who needs to do it. Having this plan in place will give you a valuable tool to guide you through the disaster and provide peace of mind knowing what to do to keep your business running.
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