Work from Home Guide — 20 Tips and Tricks I’ve Learned

When you find yourself working from home for the first time, it can be challenging to determine how to create a sense of normalcy. While sitting on your couch and working in your pajamas may seem neat at first, you quickly come to realize that being successful requires a more professional environment and mindset. Our own 30,000 team members are obsessed with finding a better way, which is why we wanted to provide you with insight from Regis Hadiaris, vice president of digital product marketing at Quicken Loans. As someone with plenty of experience working remotely, Regis has shared some of his best practices on how to be successful – and remain sane – in your new home “office.”

This post is an excerpt from an article originally posted on Medium.com.

Get up, have breakfast, take a shower, put on something other than pajamas, etc. — you get the idea. Remember, how you treat yourself on the outside reflects what you are thinking on the inside. Be good to yourself and it will show in your communications. When you work from home you mostly have only your voice and tone (and occasionally video), so everything you say and do — even your breathing on the phone — will be scrutinized.

You need a place where you do work that you can leave at the end of the day. To work from home successfully, you need to maintain a strong mental focus on what you do. You don’t want to have your work everywhere around your house, and you definitely want a door you can shut when needed.

You want the headset so you can still have both of your hands free while on the phone. A good mute function (i.e. it works, and others cannot tell when you switch mute on) will be an asset for you. It’s absolutely critical that your co-workers do not hear other noises in the background. Those noises can disrupt important meetings and build resentment that you are at home.

It’s hard to sit in the same spot in your house all day long while working. Also, people who work from home generally work more (i.e. during times when others are commuting, etc.), so you need to be able to get up, stretch, and refocus. Having a standing desk helps you do this automatically throughout the day. Research shows several health benefits to doing this. Also, if you have to be on the phone or presenting remotely over video, standing up typically helps you deliver your ideas better — especially when everyone else you are talking to is sitting!

There are studies and articles that show adding a second monitor will boost your productivity 20-30%. It’s totally true. A second monitor is critical to anyone who wants to work from home. It’s also a great teleprompter, when you need information handy while video conferencing.

One of the best things you can do to regain physical presence in your communication is to use video conferencing. This technique is critical in building rapport and clearly communicating with others. I use the built-in HD video camera in my MacBook Pro or an external HD Logitech camera to do this. I highly recommend at least your team (if you lead one), and the person you report to, have similar setups so you can see each other frequently when communicating. Wistia’s Down and Dirty Lighting Kit video is an indispensable resource for setting up your video conferencing “studio.”

The person you report to is a critical component in your work from home success. You should meet with this person once per week via video/phone to review what you have accomplished in the previous week, and what you plan to accomplish next week. It’s also critical that you make yourself available to this person whenever necessary. If they are going to trust you to work from home, you have to be transparent and accessible to them.

You need eyes and ears in the office because you don’t have them. If you have effective work relationships with team members, work with them to support you while you are remote. Calling team members just to check in (i.e. without a specific need) is a very helpful way to show you care, and hear things that wouldn’t necessarily come out in a meeting — at the same time. Another method to get more insight is to connect with people after a meeting, to discuss what they saw — that you didn’t — in the room.

Phone conversations, conference calls, and voice mails are three critical tools in your work from home toolbox. All three of these tools allow you to inject tone into your communications, something that is lacking in email, text, and chat. They also present an opportunity to create memorable communication experiences with the people you work with. Most phone systems have additional, rarely used features (like scheduling voice mails) that you can leverage to your advantage. I also highly recommend having a persistent, always-available conference call line, so you can ask others to join you on it for a discussion without having to take time to set one up.

Chat is a useful tool for communicating with folks quickly and orchestrating events in the office. Need someone to jump into a conference room to join a meeting? Use chat to coordinate that. Knowing the full capabilities of your chat program can help you leverage it effectively. When using these tools, be careful not to use acronyms and abbreviated words too frequently. Not everyone will know what you are saying, and when you work from home, you need to be a clear communicator, not a confusing one.

Email will be a lifeblood of your work at home experience. However, it’s important to remember that if you “match the medium to the message” in your communications, there will be times to use email and times not to use it. You also need to be smart about when to take “it out of email” to clear up confusion. Also, when you work from home it’s very easy to put in extra hours at non-traditional times. If you are emailing at those times, be very tuned into what message you are sending by doing that. If it’s not received well, change your tactics.

There are several tools that let you share your screen with people in the office, and vice-versa. This is a crucial technique for participating in meetings, as you can follow the presentation slides on your screen or present your slides just like you were in the room. I conduct many presentations by sharing my screen to rooms full of people in remote locations, while also talking over phone and video.

It’s up to you to define how frequently you need to revisit the office, but neglect it and you will see issues start to emerge. Those in the office need to see you occasionally, so take it upon yourself to make it happen. Some folks go back twice a year, some every quarter, and some even go back monthly or more. It all depends on your unique situation. However, it’s critical that you do have face-to-face time with people you work with.

Be animated in discussions and meetings, walk around the room in key meetings, and volunteer to give presentations to large groups. The key is to create experiences and situations where the people you work with will remember you when you are not there. Also, by doing this you create visuals in people’s minds that can augment your lack of presence in your communications when you are back at home.

When working from home, you need to leave the house. Going out to lunch is a great way to take a break, interact with other people, and refresh your mind for the afternoon. It is great to save money on lunch by eating at home, but forcing yourself to go out will help freshen your perspective.

You have to tell your story, or someone will tell it for you. It’s critical that when you work from home, you make your point in discussions and meetings. If not, people will forget that you are on the phone (the old saying “out of sight, out of mind” is very true). They will talk over you and sometimes not hear what you say, especially if you are on speakerphone in a conference room full of people. Therefore, it’s critical that you are assertive in your speaking and focus on getting at least one major point/idea in each discussion you are in.

To make the transition to work from home easier, it’s important to match time timezone of your co-workers and Clients. For example, if they are primarily in the Eastern time zone, work and take breaks similar to business hours for Eastern time.

Staying organized is another key to successfully working from home. If you get too disorganized your productivity can drop exponentially, since you don’t have co-worker interactions to help change your attitude and boost your focus. Keeping accurate to-do lists and a strong mental focus can help you stay focused and organized. I’m a big fan of Bullet Journaling.

Not only is this a great thing to do in general, but for people who work from home it’s a critical tool. This is another way to make up for your lack of presence in the office and make yourself memorable to your co-workers and Clients. When you work from home, it can be easy to slip into “doing mode” and forget the intangible communication tools you would use if you were in the office: asking how people are doing before you “talk business,” saying thank you when someone does something for you, and reaching out to people just to see how they are.

It’s very easy to be “over urgent” when working from home. Issues sometimes seem bigger than they are, especially when you are getting inundated with co-worker communications. Your workload can seem insurmountable. When you get these feelings, it’s time to get organized, re-prioritize your work, take a break, and have a discussion with someone in the office to get a sense of the “vibe” there.

If you lead a team remotely, one of the hardest things to recreate is being able to have your team stop by to chat. To solve this, call into a conference line (ideally with video too) at the same time every day, say, at 3pm for an hour. Then, let your team know they can reach you at that time. This will help create a “stop by” and chat opportunity while you work from home.

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