Making the Most of Working from Home: Top Tips & Tools from the Cargas Team

Every business is adapting to a new normal. And because there is no playbook for this, many businesses are leaning on each other, collaborating and sharing ideas about how to make it all work. We wanted to do our part by sharing what’s working for the Cargas team. We recently sat down with several Cargas executives to talk about how they’re managing at home.

Here are some quick takeaways:

• Our best advice: Be flexible, support local, build for the future
• Our favorite perk: Comfy clothes
• What we miss most: Being downtown and seeing our coworkers in person
• Our favorite workout app: Nike Training Club
• Our favorite news source: Lancaster Chamber
• Our favorite collaboration tool: Microsoft Teams (cameras on!)
• Our favorite reporting tool: Microsoft Power BI

There’s No Such Thing As a Typical Day

With a developing situation, things are constantly in flux. You’ll have to take each day on a case by case basis, and that’s ok. Here are some things our team is doing to stay grounded in a continuously evolving situation.

Have a routine, but keep it flexible. If you can keep a traditional work schedule, great. If not, try to accomplish the same things each day (work, time with family, a walk), but give yourself the flexibility to adjust the order or timing.

Set up a dedicated workspace. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but try to create a space in your home that you use solely for work (ideally separated from other members of your household).

Monitor your news intake. Check a few trusted sources once a day, and then turn it all off. Because we’re based in PA, our team has relied on information from the Lancaster Chamber, PA Department of Health, and pa.gov, as well as national sources like the CDC.

Convert your commute. Set aside a portion of your former commute time to do something just for you.

Do something physical. It can be as simple as walking around the block once a day. Or, if you want to do more, find some YouTube training videos, start a free trial for a workout app (our team loves the Nike Training Club app), or sign up for an online workout challenge.

Talk to someone. Whether it’s a family member, a friend, or a coworker, get in some facetime with another human being (even if it’s virtual)..

Stay healthy. Take all the necessary precautions to avoid exposure to COVID-19, but also think about your general physical and mental wellbeing—try to eat right, get some exercise, and monitor your stress level.

Be understanding with yourself. Sick of unprecedented? Ok. These are remarkable times. The Cargas team just entered its seventh week of working from home under circumstances we never would have imagined or predicted. Some days are more productive or frustrating or confusing than others. Some days we feel confident, other days we feel overwhelmed. We bet your experience is similar and that’s ok.

Is Work-Life Balance Even a Thing Right Now?

For some more than others. If you have young kids, suddenly find yourself sharing office space with a spouse, or are frequently interrupted by your dog’s squeaky toy during meetings, it may seem like you’ve completely lost the separation between work life and home life.

Our best advice? Give members of your household a heads up about important meetings that can’t be interrupted. And maybe take advantage of some of the video chat background settings available so you don’t have to worry so much about what’s happening around you. 

Otherwise, start thinking about work-life integration and focus on the positive. When have you ever had this kind of opportunity to see your partner, your kids, or even your pets in person throughout the day? Enjoy this special time before we’re all back in the office.

Managing Meetings

By now you’re aware of a bunch of options to hold meetings virtually (we use Microsoft Teams and RingCentral, which is powered by Zoom). But how often should you meet?

Our team has tried to maintain the rhythm of our recurring meetings, while also eliminating non-essential meetings. Our executive and leadership teams are meeting more frequently to adjust our company strategy, make decisions, and ensure we’re taking action as information becomes available and things change.

Many of our individual teams are also meeting more frequently. For example, teams are using daily huddles to check in with teammates, ask and answer questions, and see if anyone needs help.

You and your team are best equipped to determine your meeting schedule and guidelines (like having cameras on whenever possible). You might also consider some purely social meetings like a coffee break or happy hour.

There will inevitably be meeting intruders, like kids, dogs, or the Amazon delivery guy. And while disruptions may be frustrating, they can also be fun. This is the reality we’re living in, and unexpected meeting guests help humanize the situation.

A final meeting tip: Know your mute and video buttons inside and out. They can save you from some otherwise embarrassing situations.

Think About Your Local Community

This is the time to come together and show support for your local community. If you’re able, as a business, you might consider a contribution to a local nonprofit that will support families in need, like Lancaster Cares.

As an individual, you can support local businesses by purchasing takeout or curbside services, buying items online, or purchasing gift cards. If you’ve been furloughed, there may be volunteer opportunities, like fostering pets or delivering food. Small acts of kindness can make a big difference.

If you’re an essential business, thank you for everything you’re doing to support and protect the rest of us.

The Tools to Make It Work

Technology plays a critical role in working from home successfully. Our business is currently fully supported by cloud applications, which made the transition to remote work pretty much seamless. But it’s important to recognize that our move to the cloud wasn’t an overnight change. It took us several years to fully transition our business operations to cloud products.

Now is not necessarily the time to rip out your business’s operating software to replace it with a cloud solution. But if you’re struggling to work from home, it’s a good time to identify what your pain points are, where you can make improvements, and start evaluating solutions to help you meet your goals. Then, when you’re ready to take action, you’ll have a technology roadmap and a plan to support an incremental transition.

Here are the cloud products our team is using in case they might be helpful or applicable to your business:

• Document Sharing: Google Drive, Office 365, Microsoft OneDrive
• Email: Microsoft Office 365 (Outlook)
• Accounting: Sage Intacct, Nexonia (expense management), Versapay (AR automation)
• Payroll: Paylocity
• CRM: Microsoft Dynamics
• Marketing Automation: ClickDimensions, Act-On
• Reporting: Power BI
• Customer Support: Zendesk
• Project Management: Asana, Smartsheet
• Contracts & eSignature: PandaDoc
• Collaboration & Chat: Microsoft Teams
• Phone & Meetings: Ring Central