Working From Home series -4 ( Strategies for Integrating Home and Work
It was stated at the time of National shut down in India, around April 2020 in a survey, that around 98% Indian employees are not fully productive working from home, 90% of Indian employees who work from home need a better connectivity, more than 20% of them have issues sharing big files from home portals, and nearly 19% feel lonely working from home on a long stretch. And worst of all, for most, maintaining work life balance is hard to unplug.
Number of employees have started questioning the very nature of WFH options. The irony is companies such as IMB and TCS have already planned to ensure that 50% of their workforce will operate from home permanently or in shifts.
The positive side of it is that India could gain $2.25 billion revenue by saving 10% of the time spent on filing and approving claims, the study added.
While most of the operational issues are solvable such as internet connectivity, Work productivity and work-life integration will be an issue that only individuals will be able to solve or address.
Here comes a simple structural strategic plan that you with your family can sit and plan and operate while working from home.
The more you employ the tool, the better productive you will be, working from home.
Strategy 1. Schematise and Structrualize (work patterns WFH)
Working from home comes with its own set of challenges. However these challenges are not new to knowledge workers of our century. What is required is not a wish to go back to what we were doing before or what we were good at doing before. It is important to revision work productivity working from home.
The Strategy ‘Schematise and Structuralize’ will help you adapt your work culture in a segmented manner which can be measured and impacted in the future.
Schemtize | Describe | Structuralize | Activate (activities) |
Designated Work Station | You assign your work space and the work is done from the designated work place | Home ( Home Office) Desk | Email, Reports, conference calls, virtual meetings |
Grooming and Hygiene | Moving out of home clothing to workday attire | Decluttering of work desk and personal office presence | Dress Code, personal Grooming, Personal and desk Hygiene |
Work Hours | Allocation of work hours (8 hours) | Allocate 3 + 3 + 2 Hours | Streamline activities as per structured hours |
Ground Rules | Setting rules with those around in the house | Temperamental and spacious structural rules | Eg. not to step in work space, no market visit or parenting at office hours |
Remote Working Plan | Actionable plan on dos and dont’s of remote working | Standardised plan format | email hour, meeting hour, 5 minute breather hour etc… |
Strategy 2 Integrate and Improvise (work and life integration WFH)
With the development of technology and our growing reliance our own devices, and much more, about 24hours of the day working from home, creating a strict division between home and work will be a tedious, increasingly a difficult task.
One cannot unplug from work and switch to home life being at home at the end of the day, or vice versa at the start of the day
The focus should be on work-life integration. It aims to unify our personal with work life. Work life integration does not see work and life as contradictory forces, but as complimenting forces for meaningful life.
Integrate | Activate (activities) | Improvise | Activate (activities) |
Work Activities | Scheduled start in the morning | Clock your time 9 am | Improvise by starting 5 min early every day |
Life Activities | Scheduled end in the evening | Clock you time 6 pm | Improvise leaving by 5 min early |
Corelating factors | Office breaks of 5 min | Innovate break structure | Quick game, quick suggestion, quick dialogue |
| Lesiure activities | Rethink the weekend and a day take off during the week | Spend part of your time out not in | Accompany for shopping, grocery, walk, or meal |
Strategy 3 Regularise and Realise (Everyday of work & life WFH)
It is highly important to regularise habit formation, like the exercises that we we do on a routine to maintain health. Two main activities are suggested to Regularise and Realise your productivity and potential in life and work.
Activity 1 – Locus of Control
- Circle of Concern – things on which you are not in control of
- Circle of Control – things on which you are in control of
Task 1 evolves around what are the areas or activities that form your circle of concern or control, and task 2 is on what is that you can do to increase your circle of control, and reduce your circle of concern?
Activity 2 – Employing Eisenhower Matrix
Employing Eisenhower Matrix is what one could do to increase productivity in a simple and easy manner. The Eisenhower Matrix is one of the simplest tools that can quickly make you a lot better at managing and integrating your time with home and work.
Whenever confronted with something that needed to be done, Eisenhower would ask himself two questions. First, is the task important? Second, is it urgent? Based on this, the task would end up in one of four categories:
Eisenhower himself is quoted as saying:
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
This tool is freely available@ todolist.com
Likewise there are many other tools to help integrate life and work such as Pomodoro Technique and Steve Olenski’s “two-minute rule”
Tips for Work Work-Life Integration Working from Home
- Stay planned & organised
- Set your priorities very clear
- Focus on one thing at a time (don’t multitask)
- Look for quality of outcome, not quantity of effort
Integration of work and life is highly possible if the above mentioned three strategies are put into practise on a daily basis. Strategies are highly important and a key to maximising productivity on personal and professional grounds, and above all, integrating life with work.
Balancing life and work is hugely an impossibility. All that one can do is to integrate life and work for better productivity.
For more insights and practical know-how and to-do’s on implementation of strategies, we request readers to attend our webinar on “Raising Productivity, while working from Home.”
Please click here for Registration – REGISTER HERE
Elias Moses is a Senior Business Strategist, Consultant, Researcher, Corporate and Leadership Trainer, Orator, Columnist and an Entrepreneur. He is also the Founder and Managing Director of a growing reality firm in south India. He is also the founder of Managing Next, an Online portal for knowledge share and Management Consulting.
The author can be contacted@
email: elias@managingnext.in, linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/eliasmoses