Create a Shared Virtual Office to Collaborate With Colleagues
Those of us who are fortunate enough to work from home have embarked on this new lifestyle within a few months. As with so many things, there are good (no travel!), Bad (competing with other members of your family for flat surfaces to use as tables), and ugly (when I catch a glimpse of myself at Zoom meetings ). And if you are someone who is doing your best by collaborating with someone else, this new order can be especially difficult to adjust. Fortunately, there is a way around this.
In an article in the New York Times, Julie Weed gives advice on how to be successful in office work when there is no office. One strategy is to recreate a “personal” office experience with a colleague while working from home.
According to Ann Herrmann-Nehdi, CEO of Herrmann , a multinational company that creates tools to help employees communicate better – and which had an interview for a Times article – the people who work best when collaborating in the same room with a work partner. can use technology and set aside a few hours to “share a room.”
Whether it’s screen sharing in Zoom, working on Google Docs, or using some of the temporarily free conferencing tools currently available, having this virtual space to be able to have some version of the office configuration you’re used to can help. As Herrmann-Nehdi notes in the article, this allows you and your teammate to see each other, share documents and screens, and have a virtual idea board.
Even if you think you should get used to this (apologize in advance for using this term) “new normal”, it does not mean that you are actually doing the practice. This can be a major adjustment to the office environment you’ve worked in for years or decades, so take a break if there are aspects that don’t work for you. In the meantime, check out our extensive review of work at home to learn about other strategies that can help make your time as productive as possible (all things considered).