The transition to working from home has come swiftly for us all. Some may have already been operating from home offices, but for others, this is all completely new. Adapting to the work-from-home life hasn’t always been easy. It certainly doesn’t come without its fair share of challenges.
Anyone who has ever worked remotely can tell you of one of the greatest challenges that working from home poses to those that give it a shot. For those that have been doing it for years and for those struggling now to get started, communication is a common area of difficulty.
The issues that it brings up may almost seem insurmountable if you don’t know how to deal with them. However, long-distance communication complications don’t have to stop you in your tracks. The challenge can successfully be surpassed.
1] Communication Interfering with Workflow
Even when working from home, tasks still need to get completed. After all, you are still working. Well, that is unless communication issues prevent it from all getting done. In a remote work setting, miscommunication and a lack of communication become really common barriers to efficiency.
The downfall of communication happens very easily when an office is working from home. You are no longer surrounded by the team that gets it all done alongside you.
In your house, you can’t see them and they can’t see you. Making sure to sync up on expectations, project progress, and next steps is no longer so easy. With this kind of distance, there is no room for assumptions or a lack of clarity. Communication needs to be purposeful and sure.
This is the only way to get through the communication roadblocks afflicting your team. A plan needs to be made whenever there is a start to working from home, a plan that accounts for how communication will be successful.
Consider where something might go wrong or slip through the cracks and plan ahead so that this can be avoided.
Employees that work from home can actually be even more efficient and productive than when in an office setting, but they need to be able to communicate in order to find success.
2] Losing Touch with Colleagues
Overall, remote work requires you to be more intentional in the way that you communicate with others in your company. Interactions cannot take place as casually as they do when you’re in the same building together.
When you’re working from home, you can’t just continue talking in the hallways after a meeting officially ends, pop over to someone’s office to ask a quick question, or spontaneously decide to go out to lunch or after-work drinks together. Instead, dedicated effort has to go into it any time that you need something communicated.
But what if you don’t have anything specific to say but just want to get in touch with your teammate? Unfortunately, without the ease, many of those casual encounters disappear. When apart, it’s easy for coworkers to fall out of touch.
While losing touch with your colleagues might not really seem like such a big deal, it can be a problem. Without workplace connection, getting the work done may become more difficult because we lose motivation when we don’t feel that connection to the work we’re doing.
In addition, those workplace relationships are often what it takes for people to stave off loneliness and the feeling of isolation that the work-from-home experience can bring.
So, while it may require more effort to stay connected to co-workers while you’re all at home, it may well be worth it. Take the time to plan out and participate in some sort of social event with others at your workplace. Communication doesn’t all have to be work-related in order to be beneficial.
3] Lacking Cellular Capabilities
For most of these challenges, the internet and your phone are the solution. When you’re far away and in-person communication is simply not an option, a phone call or instant message can always get you in touch with those important contacts.
But what do you do if your cell phone, which may be a work-from-home employee’s only option, just isn’t making this happen for you?
For most, working from home would just not be possible without their cell phones. They need to be available at any moment for any urgent communications, but for this, a strong cell signal is absolutely a must. If your signal strength does not make constant communication easily accessible, it may be necessary to look for solutions.
With a cell phone signal booster, a lack of adequate cell signal does not need to be what keeps you from sufficient communication. Your work-from-home days can be completely unhampered by communication issues caused by poor cell signal strength once you complete the installation. Just take a look into signal boosters to resolve this communication setback.
