In our current day and time, many businesses and their human resources management have collaboratively decided on switching their employees to working from home, either full time or have a hybrid system, where employees can work some days from the office and other days from home.

    As time passed since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, many major and well-known businesses have decided that this will be the new working norm for their employees and not just a temporary situation. This decision is due to the fact that many employees have shown greater productivity and achievement while working from home. In addition, businesses have been able to spend less money on office building utility costs.

    On the other hand, working from home can be a bit challenging, for both managers and employees, when it comes to time management and tasks execution according to a certain timeline.

    As working from home sounds like a good idea for many, it has definitely shown that it requires a lot from both sides, the human resources manager/business owner and employee, in order to reach the best outcome of getting the job done right and in a timely manner

    Here are 3 of the recurring time management challenges that Managers and employees face when working from home:

Setting a work-life balanced schedule:

    When working from home, it often feels like having spare time which means that you are being unproductive. But that is incorrect. In fact, most recent studies have shown that during the year 2020 lockdown employees were more productive working from home rather than working from the office. However, that does not guarantee a healthy work-life balance which can affect both the employee and the overall business, which would suffer in the near future.

Solution: It is important to have a schedule and a to-do list for the tasks/work that is needed to be done and communicate it with your manager/supervisor. This can be done through regular communication emails, which are not the most efficient solution when it comes to performance tracking. A cloud-based HR system that can be accessible by all (managers & employees) from anywhere. As it is important to maintain a healthy work schedule that will prevent you from overworking yourself and getting burned out. 

Task duration undervaluing:

    When setting up your to-do list for the day, sometimes when you are estimating how long a task will take an employee to execute either you overvalue or undervalue that time, and this can disrupt how your overall daily, weekly, or even monthly work schedule will go, additionally it can cause a delay for the whole department/business as well.

    Sometimes when setting the estimated duration of a task, you either undervalue or overvalue the time needed to be executed by the employee, which can disrupt and delay the overall daily, weekly, or monthly work schedule for the business as a whole.

Solution: it is important to consider that tasks can take longer to be done when working from home, especially with the existence of distractions that are definitely more diverse in type and scope than in the office. Hence, prioritizing goals, setting realistic expectations and deadlines, as well as, openly communicating this with your employees.

Tracking performance and tasks achievement:

    After setting SMART(Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) goals for your employees and keeping track of their performance against the set deadlines can be very challenging, especially when they are working from home. Not being able to follow up on their daily progress will form an obstacle for achieving your business/department goals.

Solution: Perform daily check-ins or one-to-one meetings with your employees to be ahead of any issue or delay that might occur due to lack of communication in a timely manner, this can be conducted in a friendly online environment that allows secure open, and clear two-way communication.

    In the end, what has happened in 2020 and is still happening today in 2021, working from home has become the new norm for many. Accordingly, keeping track of your employees performance and achievements has become more challenging as an HR Manager or business owner. Yet modern-day software and cloud solutions that are accessible from anywhere have made it possible.