5 Tips to Communicate More Effectively from Your Home Office

Although you have all the right tools to communicate with your co-workers and clients, working from home is not the same as working from the office. These five tips can help you to improve how you communicate with your co-workers while you’re working from home.

1. Schedule appointments

Even though you’re working from home, you can still set aside time to have important conference calls with your colleagues. By booking a specific time, you can be sure that your co-worker is organized and focused on the conversation. You should also make sure that you are prepared and ready beforehand so that the conference call is productive.

2. Pay attention during phone conferences

It’s important to stay focused on the meeting even when it becomes longer than planned. You should keep multitasking to a minimum during the phone call. You might not realize it but your colleague can tell that you’re responding to your emails when they hear the keyboards clicking or you’re not following the conversation because you were thinking about something else.

3. Attend weekly staff meetings

Even though you’re working full-time from home, you should try to attend at least one weekly staff meeting to stay in touch with your co-workers. You should also contribute to the discussions to make sure that they know you’re taking an active role in the company

4. Stay online as much as possible

If you are not available at all times during the work week, your co-workers are likely to think that you’re not working even though you might be putting in more than 40 hours a week. By responding quickly to emails and returning missed phone calls, you’ll remind people that you’re there and being productive.

5. Be assertive

Don’t wait around for people to get back to you. Ask for the information you need, if you don’t feel that you’ve received it.