Looking After Your Remote Workers

With all that is happening around us, the way we work is changing rapidly.

Many people are now working remotely for the first time because they are required to self-isolate or are supporting family members who are required to self-isolate.

Even more people have been told to work from home as employers do their best to keep their people safe and to ensure their businesses continue to operate.

There are many positives to working remotely. However it also has its challenges, particularly when the transition has been made (sometimes literally) overnight. Here are three.

Challenge #1. How do you promote wellbeing?

Social isolation, uncertainty, feeling disconnected, stress, and anxiety regarding current happenings may adversely affect the wellbeing of your remote workers.

To be good at doing our jobs, we must be good at looking after ourselves by:

1. Choosing behaviours that balance the effects of emotional and physical stressors; and

2. Consciously practicing ways that reduce stress and foster a healthy, happy, and well-balanced life.

On a daily basis, we should nurture and maintain a good balance in each of these areas:

Mental – Thinking

Using the muscles of the mind by learning, teaching, exploring new ideas, and practicing “mindfulness.”

Be conscious of our current state of mind, and professional and personal stressors, in order to enhance self-awareness, positivity, maturity, and personal effectiveness.

Physical – Doing

When we activate our physical side, it aids the whole self, gives us greater resilience and helps to strengthen and balance all of our being.

Increase our bodies’ capabilities while becoming aware of their limitations by eating well, sleeping well, drinking lots of water (and not too much of the alcohol), exercising, and spending some time outdoors.

Emotional – Feeling

Feeling deeply and finding some expression for those feelings.

Having a heart to heart talk with a friend, being artistically creative, and having a good laugh or cry are all great exercise for the “heart”.

Spiritual – Being

Develop a deeper connection to ourselves and nature. Consider meditation, prayer, being in nature, and finding time to rest in the midst of things.

Challenge #2. How do you provide a safe work environment?

Remote workers want to feel safe and to feel cared for so how are we going to keep them safe and show we care for their wellbeing?

Calling your staff multiple times throughout each work day to check on them may not be a viable option for a host of reasons, particularly if your staffing levels decrease.

This is where tools like My Safety Buddy can help.

My Safety Buddy is a smartphone app and web portal based lone worker safety solution that provides a next generation solution to ensure workers are safe each and every day. The app sends out rapid alerts for emergency situations (eg. Welfare Checks, Incapacitated Person (Man-Down) Alarm, Duress Alarm and so on) in order to activate effective and timely help responses.

Tools like My Safety Buddy should be an essential component of the risk management strategy for remote workers in every organisation.

We know in these uncertain times that the cost of new tools is going to be a consideration. My Safety Buddy typically saves more than 80% of the cost of manual check in systems.

If you are not using a tool like My Safety Buddy, what are you doing to manage the safety of your remote workers? If just one of your workers is injured you will need a very good answer to this question.

Click here for further information on My Safety Buddy.

Challenge #3. How do you optimise productivity?

You may be rushing to find the right mix of tools for your growing remote workforce. There are lots to choose from.

Here are the ones we find particularly useful:

• Skype for one to one and group chats with file sharing.
• Slack for one to one and group chats particularly when we want to organise conversations into topic-specific threads.
• Trello to make to do lists, prioritise tasks, and allocate them across team members
• Zoom for video, audio and web conferencing with screen sharing.
• External monitors, keyboards and mice plugged into laptops to increase productivity.

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In these unprecedented times, it is so important that we show those around us how much we care and that we are here to help.

Travis Holland
CEO
My Safety Buddy

Should you wish to discuss strategies to improve your staff’s safety in their work environment, please feel welcome to contact My Safety Buddy.

Passionate about creating safer workplaces our goal is to enhance wellbeing for all concerned whilst also delivering improved operational and financial performance.

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