Overall Tip: Put measures in place that support your own distinctions between work and leisure. Embrace and adapt to the change, do not fight it and you can come out stronger with a work-life balance.

When we originally unfolded this blog back in January, times were very different. The aim was to focus on ensuring a work-life balance for our clients, something much easier to achieve when there is a clear, physical distinction between the workplace and home.  

This distinction has recently become blurred as more and more people are tasked with working from home. Therefore, it is more important than ever to strike the balance between work and home life. It is important to recognise this does not apply to everyone, as there remain a lot of manufacturing companies who are continuing normal operations, providing vital goods and services that keep the world turning even during lockdown.

TotalControlPro™ is all about offering the right information at the right time, from anywhere. However, right now that “anywhere” may be your kitchen or home office, due to current circumstances. We have stated in previous blog posts the value we place on the well-being of our workforce, no matter the situation, and you should too, even if the office is just your spare room for the time being. 

The TotalControlPro™ team have dominated this remote-working situation by facing it head on and ensuring we have a smooth and well organised communications system, both internally and externally. Here’s our approach:

• Two team meetings a day using Microsoft Teams ensuring a pro-active start followed by a briefing of our successes and struggles at the end of our day.
• Regular check-ins within our teams via video calls to assist and support each other.
• Keeping our social media channels updated to provide our followers with current information.
• Keeping connected to as many other parties as possible, like our clients to help them in any way we can.

Furthermore, we have many more methods of staying connected as a team that will be implemented moving forward, such as virtual office socials to help manage the spirits of our workforce. The key to this whole system working is healthy communication.

We expect that there will be even more changes yet to come for us at TotalControlPro™ and many other companies across the world, but for a lot of manufacturing companies; little about their day-to-day work life has changed. We rely on these industries continuing in order to keep our lives as normal as possible.

At TotalControlPro™ it is our job to support these manufacturers as best we can with our software. In the past we may have attended factories to show them how our system is implemented and how it works. Now we can deploy all our services online and rapidly. In the case of our newest customer, we took them from initial demo to deployment in just 10 days. It is so important that our clients and their workforce have access to the information our software enables, both on or off site.  

We understand the need to trust and communicate with our team, that we will work together and get the work completed to the best of our ability during these trying times. This trust means that management do not have to check in on employees constantly to see if they are doing their job or not.  

Another key part of this new way of working is patience. We must be patient with each other as we transition into a new way of working for the foreseeable future, it can take time to adjust to new circumstances and here at TotalControlPro™ we fully understand that it will be difficult.  

Something to keep in mind is that for a lot of people, their workplace and their home are now the same place; meaning that the line between work and free time is blurred. It is good to have something that signifies the end of the day. It could be good for you to write a daily schedule so that you know that once the last thing on that list is completed; it is the end of your working day and you may now spend time in leisure. It’s all about doing what you can to prevent those lines from becoming blurred.

Currently, we are faced with very difficult circumstances. Everyone is trying to work around COVID-19 and we are doing our best to accept this change and to adjust to the position we find ourselves in.

As a team we continue to adapt and hope you hear our battle cry:

 “We are here to serve so how can we help?”

 

George Welford_Marketing