To mitigate the spread of the dangerous virus COVID-19, the government of many countries have enforced a lockdown in their states and requested every citizen to maintain social-distancing as COVID-19 is known to be a contagious virus. However, the work system cannot stop which had led millions of people to work from home in a notice of a day. Schools and childcare centres around the world have also been closed and started online learning courses for their students to continue their curriculum as much as possible. Kimberly A. Eddleston, professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at the Northeastern University, has given a lot of insight on remote working as she has been studying the same for many years.
Eddleston and her colleague, Timothy D. Golden from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have studied 405 employees to provide some tips for the regular work from home employees and form a new perspective for the newly joined remote workers. Among the 405 employees, some of them worked a few days from home, some of them worked from home on a daily basis and the others who did not work remotely at all. She has come up with effective tips to create a healthy work environment in their home to help the employees who turned overnight remote workers for the current pandemic. Firstly, she mentioned creating a dedicated workspace that is comfortable as well as assured to be free from any interruption. Secondly, to maintain a routine as the transition from working in an office environment and a home setting can affect an employee who is not used to it. Thirdly, to stick to your usual work hours as to slide between working and not working in any particular time period can lead to spending more hour and exhaustion with the less productive outcome and at last to build a sense of community through phone or video calls to establish the lost connection between the co-workers.
Kimberly hopes to help the new remote workers and she also says that the current situation is of “unprecedented times.”
Rubena Bose