Top 10 Tips to Create a Virtual Office During a Pandemic
By: Uncultured Schwein
Tags: Remote Work, Digital, Team Building, Work, Coronavırus

2. Structure is Everything

It is estimated that 25% — 30% of workers will be working entirely remote from 2021, and with Discord, we can see a better future. Since it is such a fluid platform, creating structure is key.

Let us welcome you to our Uncultured Schwein server. What you’ll first see is that we have divided our chat rooms into the respective teams of our company: creatives, 3D design, web design, marketing, and editorial. This is where each team discusses ideas, keeps up to date with one-another, or notifies the rest of the team of any valuable information.

Then, we have our Voice Channels that allow us to hold meetings and communicate with each other. These are accompanied by specific chat rooms for note-taking during meetings, and all of these rooms are always available for a quick chat, an important meeting, or a brainstorming session.

Our advice is to be the architect of your own office. Since online work comes with many difficulties, you must set up a working space everyone understands, and that allows communication to flow easily — as we have with our respective rooms. A quick tour of the platform will make sure all of your coworkers will understand its uses.

3. Flexibility is Key

Feeling like you always have to be available to work is one of the aspects of online working that can leave people feeling burnt out. We require everyone to be present as Online (not Away, Invisible, or Busy — as the settings of Discord go), for the working hours of their contract That way, all team members are also aware of each other’s working time and can contact them when needed.

Sometimes, real-life happens, and when you’re working from home, you can be surrounded by several other factors you cannot ignore. That means sometimes your internet connection might be down while you’re screen-sharing your week’s work, or your surroundings no longer allow for your full concentration.

It’s in the way you deal with it that matters. Managers and peers alike should be prepared for scenarios where technology lets us down, and when personal issues can no longer be put on the backburner. What you can always do is reschedule a meeting, meet one-on-one for individual progress, or allow the team members to type their progress for the week in a chatroom when they have time.

4. Transparent Communication

The BBC has listed one of the biggest issues with online work to be communication and feeling out of the loop with the rest of your colleagues. Here’s one piece of advice right off the bat: communicate as much as possible. As timezones and personal lives sometimes get in the way of things, we must stay on top of our communication game.

Since we have separate chat rooms for each team, it is a lot like having a real-life office: your teammates are there to help you if you need anything, and it allows for communication to be captured easily. Everything that is communicated within a team, or even outside of it, becomes easy to find and accessible to everyone. As people can decide what they see, it’s less of a corporate feel, allowing communication to flow better. Clarifying anything that could be a misunderstanding, or making sure you’re on the right track, is essential.

5. Give Feedback to Your Peers

Whether in an offline or online setting, you should always give feedback. Peers need to know whether or not what they are doing and communicating is working for the goals of the company/project as a whole.

We have our project manager to thank for not only introducing us to our digital office platform, Discord but also for composing weekly feedback announcements, where she goes through every team member’s progress. Having a project manager, or anyone else you trust in your team to keep track of this, is essential. That way, individuals are aware that what they are doing is on the right track. For us, since we are developing a digital comic, being aware of progress is always needed.

6. Set Up a Norm

Just because meetings take place online, does not mean they should be taken lightly or be ignored. If you’re a manager, try and communicate with your team how important it is that the members attend a particular meeting, and if you are a team member, then pay attention as you would in a real-life setting. It sounds simple, but we also know this can be hard when working digitally.

With the pandemic still going on, it can be hard to separate your work life from your home. Our advice — rework your day’s pattern. Our structure allows all coworkers to have set hours they work in — and so should yours. Of course, when your computer is on during dinner time, it can be hard to ignore the sound of a message chiming in, but it is more productive in the long-run to set your boundaries, goals for the day, and make that tomorrow’s task instead.

Quartz at Work recommends making a clear transition between clocking in and out of work — set a reminder, or light a candle you can blow out at the end of the day, so your mind can know when it’s time to spend time at home.