Remote Work Best Practices

According to a report from Microsoft, meetings are up over 150 percent since Feb. 2020 and chats via platforms like Teams are up over 30 percent per person! At eMoney, with 650+ employees spread across 35+ states, effective communication and coordination are vital in our remote work environment. To help you optimize remote work and communication with each other, we’ve compiled some best practices to keep in mind as you interact with your colleagues via Teams, email, and meetings.

Bonus: The EEC put together a list of tips and suggestions that you can choose from to help manage your stress, maintain productivity, and carve out time for individual contributor work. View it here.

Timing is Everything

As a company serving more than 100K users, we know emergencies pop up, and there are instances when we need to get information quickly. However, be sure to evaluate the urgency of the issue at hand before hitting send. Consider the following.

If it’s after our normal working hours, use the scheduling feature to send an email or Teams message during business hours.

If someone has an Out of Office (OOO) message, reach out to their alternate contact or schedule your email/Teams message for when they return.

• Click here to learn how to delay the delivery of an email in Outlook.
• Click here to learn how to schedule a message in Teams.

Scheduling Meetings

Can this meeting be an email or an asynchronous communication? Before scheduling a meeting, consider asking yourself this question.

• Asynchronous communication is the exchange of information without the need for an immediate response e.g., during a meeting. Instead of real-time interactions, messages, emails, recordings, and other updates can be distributed using channels like Outlook and Teams – allowing people to respond to messages when they have the bandwidth to do so.

Consider who should attend your meeting. Identify your key stakeholders and others who may need to be involved. Instead of inviting two or three people from the same team, invite one person to serve as the proxy and share the recording with the others to keep them informed.

Utilize the Scheduling Assistance feature in Outlook to accommodate people’s schedules and maximize attendance.

• Click here for a tutorial on how to use this functionality.

Respect geographical differences. Not all employees live in the same time zone so, please keep this in mind when scheduling meetings and try to find a time that accommodates everyone as much as possible or rotate meeting times to be fair to all participants.

Schedule the right amount of time for the meeting. Think carefully about how much time you actually need and schedule accordingly i.e. Could it be 30 or 45 minutes vs. an hour?

• A study from Microsoft shows that a 5-minute break between meetings can make a big difference in stress levels during our work day! Did you know that settings in Microsoft Outlook make it easier to automatically carve out these essential 5-minute breaks between back-to-back meetings? Click here to learn how!

Create an agenda, invite the right people, share meeting goals and objectives, identify what needs to be decided on/who is deciding, and provide any relevant documents in advance. This gives participants the chance to add their own agenda points, research the topic, and prepare what they want to say—and ask—in advance, saving valuable time.

Hosting and Attending Meetings

If presenting, close out of Outlook and any other applications that send you notifications. For applications like Teams, you can enter ’do not disturb’ mode by clicking your profile icon and changing your status. This prevents notifications from popping up in the bottom right-hand corner of your screen.

Try to start the meeting in advance or on time as to not keep people waiting.

• This is when a 45-minute meeting would come in handy! By doing so, you’ll get a 15-minute grace period to refill your water, stretch, etc. and start/get to your next meeting on time!

During the meeting, consider using the Notes functionality in Teams. You can assign attendees agenda items, take meeting notes, and assign tasks to help ensure that progress is made during and after your meeting! Click here to learn how to use this functionality.

Before recording a meeting, let folks know your intention to do so. 

Pause for questions or comments and be sure to check the chat for questions, too.

Take a break from the camera when appropriate! Before doing so, consider the importance of the meeting, who will be in attendance, and whether or not you’re presenting.

Be mindful of mute. You’d think we’d have the hang of it by now, right? But we all can benefit from reminders about muting ourselves when not actively participating and unmuting when speaking.