VIDEO: 5 Tips for working from home with Google

Chances are high that just like me, you’re working from home since a couple of days. Let me quickly share five tips that I have come across, after only one morning of working from home with Google tools like Hangouts Meet, Google Docs & Google Sheets. Use these tips to improve your productivity and efficiency while working remotely with the Google tools in G Suite.

Check out the 5 tips for efficient home working with Google in the video or in the transcript below.

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1. Schedule video meetings with your team & colleagues

First tip: schedule sync video meetings with your team or with your project team in advance. For example schedule already one for Wednesday or Friday so you don’t have all the chat overload of people asking for have a quick team sync or update.

Please do schedule them in advance already, as we will be working from home for a couple of days or weeks.

2. Manage tasks & status updates in spreadsheets

My tip number two is: instead of updating your team members via email or chat that your task is done, and requesting the second or the next task to perform – quickly create a spreadsheet with all the details of the different tasks, the owners and the statuses of these tasks.

This way you can quickly check whoever is pending or still finalising some tasks in order to get started with the next one. This is far more easy than asking your team members to update you via chat.

3. Efficiently sharing files & documents sharing

Then the third tip: in order to explain your colleagues and your employees how to work efficiently with the new tools, people are in Google creating a lot of files and documentation and sharing this through all of the company. This is easily done by sharing a document with a link for all of the domain. However, I received some customers who are receiving a lot of requests for access.

So in order to teach and to train your employees how to work with the tools, or how to notify them about the fact that a file is already shared, just add a quick sentence or a short sentence on top of the document that is shared. In this sentence, explain them who has access to this file already. So they do not start asking for permissions or asking to further share this documentation.

4. Keep short syncs short

Tip number four: quick video meetings with Hangouts Meet are great! Hangouts Meet sessions, online video conferencing with the team, that’s all good.

But keep them as short as possible. Don’t start small talk, and if you’re asking somebody if he or she has time for a quick sync: keep it short as well to maximise the productive time of the other person.

5. Use digital tools to communicate visually

Last but not least, tip number five. Try to use as much as possible screenshots and videos to explain things to your colleagues or to your employees. Just like I’m recording this video.

All equipment and the tools that you have by using G suite are just made for creating this material. And it’s far more efficient and productive than typing out complete documents. Just record whatever they need to learn or whatever you want them to teach just like I’m creating this video now.

That’s it for my 5 tips for working from home with Google. I hope you found them useful to organise your remote work better. If you have any tips of your own, feel free to drop them in the comments!