Click here to get this post in PDF
Back in March 2020, we all embarked on our working from home experiences filled with intrigue of how this would work whilst questioning whether our working world had changed forever. Social media soon became flooded with images of home workstations and people embraced tech to allow us to stay connected with our work colleagues. In fact, tech was so heavily adopted that providers of video communications saw phenomenal growth i.e. Zoom usage hit an all-time high of 300 million by the end of April 2020, increasing its share price by 400% and revenue to £132m by the end of October 2020.
Nearly a year on, not much has changed – apart from the initial novelty of remote working has worn off! If you look on any forum it is filled with people struggling with the monotony working from home has created. People feel like worker drones; with back-to-back video conferences and non-stop email and chat threads. Throw into the mix home schooling and no demarcation between work and home life and cracks have inevitably started to show. Searches around terms like ‘Remote working mental health’ have increased significantly during lockdown in January 2021, with over 90,000 people looking for help and solutions to ease the pressures they are feeling.
There are blogs offering advice on how to build resilience and maintain productivity, but these offer the same tried and tested content of taking breaks and working in a different room to the one you relax in. What Cambridge based GetBusy’s CEO Daniel Rabie wanted to achieve was a re-invention of how we worked, looking at working more simply in a to-do style format – breaking down projects or tasks into bite sized chunks to stop people from feeling overwhelmed automatically made them more productive.
GetBusy’s platform offers the user a task management software solution for their workload and takes admin away in terms of delegation and chasing. It has added features normally only found as stand-alone services including electronic document signing, and the capability to transfer and share large documents (200 MB) with GDPR and ISO2001 level compliance and security built-in.
“Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted and unproductive are the signs of burnout and we want to ensure that people don’t get to that level. We want to help our users work smarter, not harder and give them the collaboration tools to help them prioritise their tasks” says CEO Daniel. “Our innovation programme for the software is focused on human behaviour and what we need as individuals to be more productive and happier everyday in our jobs.
“The thinking is, if we break down what we do and how we feel into simple units, the challenges we face become simpler to address, and changes become easier to make.
Daniel goes on to say: “It’s like the metaphor about when a plant starts to struggle you change something i.e. the position, the lighting, the amount of water you provide to help. What you don’t do is blame the plant for not prospering – you work out what it needs to thrive instead. We think employers need to relook at the email drain and the back-to-back video calls and try something different for the sake of their employees’ mental health (and their own).”
GetBusy has given some top tips for remote working and keeping team motivation high.
1. Ensure your team is happy
First and foremost, make sure you have a happy and motivated team and take time to check in with them regularly. An engaged employee cares about their effort, work and performance and the difference it can make to a business. Organisations that support employees and communicate honestly and accurately as part of the ongoing culture of the company will see the results in the bottom line. Using the right tools to communicate – GetBusy, WhatsApp, and Zoom are all great ways of keeping the lines of communication open and clear.
2. Prioritise your day
Having a to do list is a great way to get organised, but it can often lead to overload. It’s a better idea to have your daily tasks so you can focus on what you need to do in the current day. Why not prioritise it in order and work your way down the list, the science of productivity has shown this is the best way for anyone to tackle their day and make you feel you have achieved something.
3. Get the most difficult tasks completed first
It’s all too easy to put off the hardest tasks till the end of the week and start with the easy ones. Don’t. The dread starts to build as the week goes on and it can really start to play on your mind. Choose the right time of day when you feel the most productive and get it off your to do list. You will feel a sense of accomplishment and you can then crack on with the easier tasks that you enjoy.
4. Practise positive reinforcement
If someone finishes some outstanding work, then praise them. Making employees feel valued usually leads to more work worthy of being praised. That positive reinforcement helps to keep morale high and remember, success is a reward in itself, but a little bit of spontaneous praise can be a source of motivation for every team member.
For more information about GetBusy, please visit www.getbusy.com
About Get Busy
GetBusy’s document management and task management software enables over 67,000 professional paying users around the world to digitise their operations and be productive while working in the office or remotely.
Listed on the London Stock Exchange, with roots going back over two decades, GetBusy’s growing team of 140 people are based in Cambridge, Houston and Sydney.
The Group has consistently reported annual revenue growth in excess of 15% since its IPO, and it now counts over a third of the UK’s largest and most demanding professional services firms among its clients.
