As most of us have been working from home for at least a month now and have started to settle in to this new way of doing business, it is a great time to stop and reflect about how you can help your team be at its best no matter their locale. Here are some questions to ask your team to help them consider how effective they have been as a remote worker and how they might improve.

Regarding Schedules

Have you found a schedule that works well? Are you able to stick to it while still balancing family, pets, and sanity? Are you a morning person? Or a night owl? Or neither? Do you need time to wake up before you can dive right in or do you open your laptop as soon as your feet hit the floor? Are you able to turn off and relax or are you constantly hearing the siren’s call of your email? Take some time to understand what it is about your schedule that works well and what doesn’t.

Regarding Work Itself

What about your working style? What aspects of your new way of working are helping you be productive? Have you found a way to carve out quiet time to focus? Or are you actually more productive when you have a little bit of chaos happening around you? Do you need a dedicated work area or are you okay working from anywhere in the house? Try to understand how your new work from home environment has been helping or hurting you.

Regarding Communication

What methods of communication are working well for you right now? Are you a fan of video conferencing? Or do you prefer chat or email? How about phone calls? What works well for you? Have you tried something new or are you sticking to previously used channels? Reflect on how you are communicating most effectively as well as how you are receiving information most effectively.

Regarding Improvement

After taking the time to consider these aspects of working from home, what could you change about them? Do you need to be better about sticking to a routine? Do you need to set up a better home office in order minimize distraction? Do you need to take more walks to clear your head? Do you need to improve communication through a certain channel or with a certain co-worker? What aspects of your work from home approach are helping you to be productive? And which ones are holding you back?

Helping your teammates identify and recognize these facets of their work from home life will not only help them now, but it will also help once everyone is back in the office. There is no time like the present to better understand and improve the way that you and your team work.

Stay safe and stay healthy.