Meetings are ubiquitous across companies of all shapes and sizes, and it takes a conscious effort to ensure they’re actionable and productive, rather than a laundry list of status updates. As teams around the world have transitioned to fully remote-work, many have had to completely rethink their meeting practices, including everything from content to cadence.
As the world recently transitioned to remote work, at Asana, we have been curious about the impact on people navigating the realities of working from home. In a time when clarity, empathy, and human connection are imperative, it’s important to understand how new worldwide macro trends affect people on a personal level. To do so, we conducted a survey to evaluate the behaviors and attitudes of 5,140 full-time employees currently working from home.
In the past two months, companies everywhere have shifted their workforces from office cubicles and conference rooms to home offices and dining room tables. The coronavirus pandemic’s thunderous impact – bolstered by government mandates to maintain social distancing protocols and shut down non-essential workplaces – has forced companies to pivot hard and fast to a new reality, whether they’re ready for it or not.
“The next big thing most likely to kill 10 million people will not be a war but a virus.” — Bill Gates, Ted Talk 2015 Who could have imagined that his farsightedness would hold true in 2020, have us locked in our homes, and the global economy falling like a house of cards? COVID-19 has affected lives of people across the globe in a way that many unexpected things are becoming the new normal.
Remote working has never been such a hot topic as it is today, with the COVID-19 situation pulling the rug out from under the feet of a lot of companies. And while some have been able to adjust quicker, then most everyone has had to make some changes and overcome challenges. And it’s important to share the difficult lessons with others as well – because sometimes all we need is a reminder that we’re all in this together.
Staying on track while working remotely comes down to one thing: effectively collaborating with your team. But learning to collaborate while working remotely means finding ways to maintain visibility into team projects and stay organized from anywhere. To get a glimpse of how people worldwide are staying organized and connected while working remotely, we asked the Asana Community to share their best practices. Read on to learn their tips for collaborating effectively with Asana.
I don’t think any of us could have confidently predicted back in February that we would be working from home for several months. But here we are, continuously trying to find our footing and hoping we will get things under control soon. More than that, growing impatient to get back to our normal lives. However, I have caught myself thinking about whether we will ever go back to the way things were before.
Managing remote employees can be a challenge for many team managers — especially if you recently switched to remote work due to the Coronavirus pandemic! But don’t worry, managing remote teams isn’t difficult! To help you out, we’ll cover a few essential tips on managing remote employees in this article. We’ll talk about the challenges of managing remote employees, the best solutions to them and highlight a few essential tools for every remote team.
The transition to remote work has all the feels. Like many teams, we’re navigating the transition to entirely remote work. Rather than reinventing the wheel, we’ve turned to our customers and community members for tips. Several of our customers have been operating remotely for years, and have developed effective strategies to empower their workers for success. Here are a few of our favorite tips.
For the last five years, I have worked primarily from home. I also worked from home in the 1990s, attitudes and technology have changed a lot in those 25 years. Now, in response to COVID-19, working from home will be different again in the future. This article explores these past, present and future eras of remote work.
TL;DR: Vision gives companies a goal to work towards. It gives teams — especially remote teams — specific objectives that offer step-by-step guidance for accomplishing important goals. Even when remote teams are separated by several time zones, a clear vision statement helps individual team members understand how every decision they make can have a positive impact for the entire company. Here’s how to get started. A vision statement is a lot like your company’s North Star.
Right now, teams around the world are learning how to work from home. The transition can be a challenge, especially if your team has never worked remotely before. And, no matter how much experience you have with remote work, we’re learning—together—that it takes time to find your groove and settle into a routine in this new “normal.” But you aren’t alone.
Tons of companies have now been forced to start working remotely because of COVID-19. And for good reason, right? It allows employees to practice social isolation to keep themselves safe and avoid passing on the virus to anyone else. But increased personal safety is not the only benefit of having a virtual team. Virtual teams can help your company in tons of different ways!
As more and more teams adjust to working remotely, we’ve been relying on technology to help us to keep work going — even when we can’t be in the same physical space. Today, we wanted to share our remote work tech stack: the tools that have been helping us to continue working without interruption behind the scenes. Some of them we’ve been using for years; some of them have been on our radar for a while but we’re only fully utilizing them now.
If you’re used to working in a bustling office, you might find the newfound silence of remote work deafening. On the other hand, if you’re sheltering in place with a house full of family or roommates, you might be looking for a little help tuning out. Thankfully there’s a quick and social distancing-approved solution to both scenarios: music! Various studies have shown music’s power to lift your mood and help you maintain focus—two things many of us could use right now.
Struggling to manage your virtual team? There are many advantages to hiring remote workers — but only if you’re prepared enough to overcome the challenges of virtual teams. However, with the sudden COVID-19 outbreak, most teams aren’t prepared to deal with virtual work immediately. This is why we’ve decided to cover the 7 biggest challenges of virtual teams and cover how you can deal with them!
One day you’re grabbing your to-go latte, responding to Slack messages on your subway commute, and arriving at work to find a coworker waiting by your desk with a broken computer… and the next, you find yourself at home, sipping on plain old drip coffee while making huge decisions about remote work that will affect your entire organization – all with only a day’s notice.
While the heart of a company’s culture is not dependent on in-person facetime, it often manifests in ways that bring people together in the same space. So what happens when connecting in person is no longer an option? “We still need human connection.
Tons of companies have gone remote due to the COVID-19 outbreak. But if your team’s remote, how do you communicate with them? How do you get project updates? How do you conduct meetings? Seems impossible, right? It isn’t! The best remote teams use multiple communication tools to collaborate efficiently. To help you out, we’ll highlight some of the best remote team communication tools for your team.
Surveys after surveys regarding these days’ working environment all reveal one thing: working from home is great. You get to set your own hours, avoid wasting precious time commuting, and you are able to tackle complex work in the comforts of your home. The benefits of working from home can convince even the most avid supporters of 9 to 5 jobs and office-based environments to take the plunge.
