Business centre tips work at home impact

Hundreds of people across the region are finding themselves facing the new challenge of working from home to practise social distancing. While it seems a simple concept to move your day’s tasks to the confinement of your home, the new setting can have a big impact on a person and their work. Albany Business Centre has noticed this problem with many people in Albany in the past few weeks. Executive officer Tracey Bridges said they soon realised it was a challenging change for a lot of people, and the community needed coping strategies. “As we have helped support our small business community through the last couple of weeks, we quickly realised that the sudden shift of working from home affected a lot of people across a number of different industries,” she said. “The significant drop-off of unstructured person-to-person interaction, casual conversation and that feeling of belonging to a team has really impacted how people are feeling, their productivity, motivation and momentum, not to mention their mental health.” That was the reason behind creating a virtual co-working session that happens online every Tuesday morning from 10am to noon. Ms Bridges said they created the program to keep the community connected, share “wins”, drink tea together, get things done or just enjoy each other’s company. “From conversations with people who have joined our co-working from home and how-to-work-from-home workshops, we have picked up that a lot of people are struggling with juggling their work and home life from the same space,” she said. “This includes making and actually taking the time for themselves — time out, zen time, recharge time — and some people are struggling with being able to motivate themselves and managing productivity. “Lack of human interaction and reaction has also affected people who are more extroverted; they get a lot of their energy from direct engagement. “If people feel like leading a stretch or guided breathing session or even a dance-off during our virtual co-working sessions, that is encouraged. “That way, people who would like to join in can, and those who don’t want to can just pop the meeting on mute. “It’s a no-pressure situation, so if people don’t feel like contributing, that’s totally fine too.” The sessions aim to leave participants feeling refreshed and give them motivation. Topics of discussion include how COVID-19 has affected people’s businesses and lives, how they have adapted activities to better suit the situation, who is listening to what podcast and why and coping mechanisms to deal with stress and much more. Ms Bridges said it was important to remember that you could work from home successfully. “I track everything on an Excel spreadsheet and include a to-dolist — because we need to acknowledge the unplanned achievements and things that we get done every day — along with a gratitude list to remind me of the wonderful and positive things happening in our lives at the moment,” she said. “I mark off the things on my to-do list when I have done them, and block out the times in my day that I have been productive, exercising or disconnecting. “I think it’s really important to put effort into disconnecting right now as we are surrounded by information overload that isn’t always from credible sources and can easily impact mood and motivation.” For people wanting to get their working from home rhythm sorted, Albany Business Centre is hosting a free workshop to help next week. Other upcoming events include the Liquid Linkup and a virtual sundowner where people can get together.