Working from home, staying connected, and informed in times of crisis

The Corona virus has forced companies to look into ways to enable people to work from home. The challenge facing us all is enabling employees to continue to communicate and collaborate internally and with customers productively, without being able to meet physically in the same location. 

Working from home presents not only productivity challenges, but it will also challenge your company culture and affect your ongoing business operations.  Working from home can be isolating for some of your employees. Keeping this in mind while setting up your work from home strategy, is of utmost importance.

GoPomelo is no stranger to remote working as a cloud company. Our company culture is engraved with using cloud technology from Workplace from Facebook to drive company communication and  to connect with our employees throughout the APAC. As a connected organization on Workplace from Facebook, we are able to continue our business operations and supporting our customers from any location. 

Setting up for Company-Wide Remote Working

The first action to enable remote working is getting a tool in place quickly that is easy to use for employees while maintaining a high level of security to safeguard your organizations information.   Workplace from Facebook has a familiar interface that employees already understand how to use, so the learning curve is short. This helps drive high engagement and high adoption of the tool.

At GoPomelo, we use Workplace from Facebook for:

• Broadcast announcements
• Safety Check for Crisis management
• Team and Project Communication
• Task Management
• Chat and Video Calls
• Automation with Bots
• Town Hall Meetings

We integrate Workplace from Facebook with G Suite, so users don’t have to remember multiple passwords and so that provisioning and de-provisioning of users, is managed by a single source of truth. Documents in Google Drive can be easily be shared with users on Workplace.  

The next step is to define the company goals and objectives in order to understand 1) how to customize Workplace from Facebook to fit your business and 2) what communication is to be provided to your employees to communicate the changes in the way they work.

Creating communication groups on Workplace from Facebook can easily allow employees to replace traditional communication and collaboration processes.. For example, moving team updates, company town halls, and company-wide communication to Workplace Live and groups.

Highly Connected.

Highly Productive.

To bring your team together and keep them connected, it is recommended to build a framework for your daily and weekly tasks. Structure in your team will help to drive their daily routine and productivity.

Follow these 5 simple steps to get connected. 

1. Create Company-wide and Team groups, Leaders can add their members in.
2. Pin a post with your expectations of your colleagues in Workplace (Do’s and Don’ts)
3. Use mark as important to make sure your message reaches everyone
4. When all members joined, share your message in a Live Video sharing your support for everyone and how to make the best out of this situation
5. Start team collaboration
1. Integrate your folder from Google Drive / One drive to your group
2. Let your team members share their daily activities with the rest of the team through posts and topics

Maintain your company culture

Working from home brings challenges for people feeling disconnected and isolated from others. The sharing of information from the company, leaders, and colleagues is important to keep everyone on the same page. 

Create an open group to provide a single source for updates and safety recommendations and then ensure these high-signal updates reach everyone effectively by marking them as important. Use sources from the WHO, Governments or other accredited organizations to make sure your employees receive accurate information.

Move meetings online and  increase the frequency to discuss projects.  Have 1:1’s, and hold daily standups within your team. Besides being open to employee questions regarding “Covid-19” in an “open group” listening and understanding the concerns of your employees.

Lastly, have your weekly/monthly TGIF on Workplace, stream live and share your thoughts, latest information, and appraisals to all employees quickly and take live questions. 

As a strategic Workplace from Facebook partner, we currently offer a virtual implementation to organization's of all sizes. Contact us to learn more about how we can launch your organization effectively and enable your Work from Home strategy quickly.

Expedite your Workplace Implementation today!