With the spread of the novel Coronavirus affecting countless everyday operations, such as travel, face-to-face meetings and large gatherings, mitigating the impact of COVID-19 has become a top priority for businesses and leaders here in Australia, and worldwide.
As a result, we have seen many companies take the difficult step and mandate that employees work remotely to decrease chances of the virus spreading, for an uncertain period of time.
During this time, odds are that these recent events are affecting your work life. Whether you’re thrilled not to wake up early, commute the distance to work, put your work pants on or on the contrary, feel scared about the impact on your industry, the professional landscape is rapidly changing.
Managing this abrupt shift of working from home can be challenging, especially if your job requires constant physical interaction and communication with your team.
The slightest change to your everyday work routine can impact your productivity, focus, and achievements. However we have an approach that provides you with a solid framework for working efficiently and successfully from home.
This framework is called the ‘The Four Foundations for Behavioural Success’ and there are 4 key parts.
Rules and Expectations
Establishing a set of rules and expectations helps you to lay a solid foundation for effective work and time management. What parameters are you going to set yourself or what are your expectations that you must deliver during the day?
These rules may include where your designated workspace is, making sure you are set up in an area where you can close the doors and shut out any potential distractions. It may also require you to create an achievable to-do list and plan what tasks need to be completed, on top of non work-related errands.
To ensure you live up to your expectations you also must set yourself appropriate boundaries, reduce distractions and create an environment where you can be the most productive version of yourself.
Inspect
Further to clearly listing the expectations you have for the day, next consider how you are going to inspect your progress along the day. One way to check in is creating a list of micro and macro goals for yourself that can keep you motivated and on-track during the day.
By doing this, you’re not only holding yourself accountable for your work, but you are also prompting yourself to produce better work.
For business leaders, it is just as important checking in with your team to ensure that you’ve got the right expectations being understood and followed.
Consequences
The third key part of this framework is setting yourself consequences to help change and reinforce your behaviour that will allow you to act productively.
These consequences can either be negative, creating the necessary pain our subconscious needs to change wrong behaviour, or they can be positive, being an incentive and rewarding constructive behavioural change.
Let’s say you take back that extra half an hour commute to work and put it to beneficial use, how will you reward yourself for being productive during those normally lost minutes?
Consistency
The final part of the behavioural success model, for it to work effectively, is ensuring you are consistent in the way you operate and check-in. Ask yourself whilst working, ‘Am I following the right process and am I achieving what I need to achieve in the time frame and conditions I have?’.
A good tip would be to follow the same structure as you usually would if you went in to work and operated 9-5 Monday to Friday. This can allow you to work at the same pace and time frame as you would in the office, ensuring you take advantage of the hours you would normally be working through.
These drastic shifts in the current working environment can be stressful, especially during unprecedented times. The development of COVID-19 has created a new landscape and with this comes adjustments to your typical operations.
The key to successfully working remotely is to establish a routine for yourself that allows you to effectively complete a variety of tasks, whilst allowing you to still keep work and home life separate. Applying this framework to your daily routine will allow you to set vital boundaries, keep your workdays productive and help you to thrive as a remote worker.
Our Culture and Leadership Partner Dan Czura breaks down ‘The Four Foundations for Behavioural Success’ framework and further discusses how we can apply this to our daily routines. Check out the video below and let us know in the comments how you will apply these practices!
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