Disconnect and Unplug from Work - Why and How?

Going back in time from 2019, we used to like working and loitering around in the office for all sorts of ??‍? agreeable and disagreeable reasons. And such ⏫ proclivities would remain enclosed within the four walls of the workspace - aiding employee satisfaction.

Now coming back to the ? future in 2021, the remote work from the home model has blurred the lines between work and home. Because, when you are working from home, the norm is that you are always a call away. 

Post the Covid era; every working professional has experienced this in one way or another. Disconnecting completely from work has become more complicated than before. 

If you are a young co-founder of a new-age startup, you need to give your employees the right to shut off from work by EOD. Please make this a ? star-studded rule and ensure that it applies to you as well. There is no fun in going on a ? vacation by keeping Slack notifications ON. If notifications bother you, think about how irritating they can become for your ? employees. 

Just ask yourself this - Do you want to be the senior who keeps on pinging people outside office hours and is tagged as a nosy neighbour by your employees?

Here is a checklist of four points to help you develop and implement a robust rule of disconnecting your employees from work and boost employee satisfaction.

Cast Away, Not Literally

For starters, give your employees uninterrupted time-off to get refreshed and recharged. Letting your colleagues enjoy a nice vacation alone or with their family can go a long way in improving employee productivity. Here is how to execute this:

• Mute all ⏰ notifications and snooze all emails round-the-clock concerning the employee who is on vacation. 
• Before the time-off begins, create a note to assign tasks to other co-workers when the employee is out of the office. A sneak peek into this document will quickly provide relevant information to everyone for tracking work logs.
• In case multiple events occur during the employee’s absence, you can utilise Loom to record instances, Google meets, Zoom calls, product updates and much more. All they need to do is watch the recorded video to get updated on track when they are back. 

Remote Work 

This two-letter word has become a ? hot topic worldwide, courtesy of the hybrid model. Here is how you can change the status quo:

• Having a sound understanding of what you will be doing and why remote work is foundational. Define what consists of remote work. Who is entitled to remote work? What are the expectations of your role? Is it different from being in the office?
• The basic idea of remote working is to facilitate flexibility for your employees. Ensure that there is a minimum quota of work hours to be met daily so that each individual can set personal boundaries.
• Create a series of written instructions and manuals to assist employees. Your workforce should have a clear-cut response to how much work they are expected to complete.

Create Priority for Communication

Just like there is an option to snooze and schedule an email, you should also adjust communication expectations for your employees. Here are multiple ways to come up with practical outputs:

• For the night ?owls, do not disturb the early birds—Ping your colleagues the following day or schedule messages for delivery in-office hours. In case of a time-sensitive requirement, request your employee for a conversation over the phone.
• For the ?‍? techies on heavy-duty, limit your notifications. Your adventures in GitHub need no ? public announcement. Create a separate channel on Slack for the same.
• For the co-founders, make it a rule to not expect replies immediately from your co-workers. Instead, keep a time frame for providing a response. 

Get Organised with these Tools

First off, tech has changed how we communicate and work in significant ways. With every new wave of tech, challenges exclusive to organisations 25 years ago have successfully become more digestible to the modern working environment. Here is how you can ?‍♀️ tame these challenges with these tools and improve employee satisfaction:

• Trello is an excellent tool to organise and centralise tasks for your employees. You can tag, label, create a dashboard/notes/content, send requests, and do more on Trello.
• Notion - This tool is like a gift from the tech gods if there are ? any. This platform is like Minecraft for your organisation. Individuals can create a schema-like blueprint of everything, literally anything. Notes, training materials, onboarding materials, OKRs, KPIs, customer database, internal docs, calendar, schedule updates, managing clients, interviews, feedbacks, appointments, and the list goes on. 
• Peoplebox - With Peoplebox, you can enable remote and regular employees to work autonomously truly. Align 1:1 conversation, set up goals, performance reviews, automated surveys, and get team engagement insights.
• Whimsical - Super ideal for collaborative working and building a product roadmap. Create docs, flowcharts, wireframes, mind gaps, projects in a unified manner. Truly a product enriching experience.
• Airtable - A low-code platform that doubles up as a spreadsheet with features of a database. Sign-up for free to build collaborative applications.You can also check airtable alternatives 
• Plum Insurance - An excellent neo-generation employee health benefits and membership platform that comes with group health insurance and wellness programs. Get complete digital experience on the web, mobile and WhatApp with Plum. Moreover, employee health insurance is a great tool to retain, attract good talent and increase employee satisfaction.

When you curate and create this extensive? knowledge base for your workforce, your co-workers will be less dependent on their managers and colleagues for seeking information. Now that your employees have access to all the information they need, they can fly ?️ away on a vacay, disconnect from work, and rest easy. 

Remember, work from home or work from the ?️ international space station or ? Saturn or any other planet in the solar system. You have full right to disconnect virtually and perpetually if the latter choice comes into effect.

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