This is a guest post from Katie Stearns, PR and outreach manager at BeeBole Timesheet. She’s a digital marketer who loves monitoring management and leadership trends to create more valuable B2B content for managers. Katie is particularly interested in helping the world become a more productive place.

For many HR professionals and company executives, 2020 has turned out to be rather stressful (to say the least). Many of us started off the year with a twinkle of hope in our eyes, but the current pandemic has proven to be more challenging than we imagined.

For many companies, switching to remote work was required, but they never considered if remote work was right for their teams. As company executives decide whether they want to return to the office or continue to work from home and move their operations online, employers are likely asking many questions.

If you and your company are considering a shift to remote work, here are some tips to help you get started on your journey. In this Process Street post, we’ll be covering:

• What is remote work?
• 15 questions to ask yourself before the work from home transition
• Is the work from home transition right for your team?

Let’s jump right in!
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This is a guest post by Donald Fomby. Donald is a freelance content writer who works for ClassyEssay. He has spent more than seven years in the copywriting and blogging industries, writing articles, guides, and checklists for small eCommerce businesses. Donald uses his curiosity about online business to write about topics valuable to small business owners.

The product manager’s role is a juggling act.

To fulfill the needs of expectant customers, the product manager needs to work with the sales, marketing, and engineering teams — alongside the rest of the product team — to facilitate necessary changes and improve the product(s) in question.

But that juggling act has gotten even harder as of late.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many product research and management processes that were done collaboratively and in-person have now pivoted online. Needless to say, this change had made it more difficult for product managers to succeed in their role and complete projects in the way they’re used to.

This transition may have caused workloads to build up, task lists to overflow, sprints to stagger, and thus, impacting the rest of the product team.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. The truth of the matter is that you can successfully manage any product research or development project remotely with optimal organization.

It’s the key to bettering collaboration with your remote team, and ensuring you and the rest of your product management team are keeping on the right track. If you strategically organize your work, you will also be able to instill and maintain successful collaboration with the people you’re working with, despite the many miles that keep you apart.

Seeing as 86% of executives say that a lack of collaboration is the most common reason for failure in their companies, it’s something that you need to get to grips with, particularly as a product manager.

By reading through this Process Street guest post, you’ll do exactly that. To boot, I’ll also provide some extra tools to help you thrive as a product manager! Just make your way through these sections:

• The 4 must-follow tips & tricks to excel as a product manager
• Product management tools to thrive in 2020 and beyond

Let’s get started.

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In the Before Time (read: before coronavirus struck and remote work became more commonplace) there were four types of people on the morning commute.

First, there was the person falling asleep in their seat – most likely one of the 15% of Americans who doze off while at work. Second, there’s the one working on their laptop while drinking their fourth cup of coffee of the day. Then there’s the person who’s listening to music or reading a book, conserving their productivity for the office. Last but not least, there’s the individual who’s working one minute but snoring the next.

These people are wolves, lions, bears, and dolphins respectively.

Not sure what the hell I’m talking about?

Then you haven’t heard of chronotypes.

Luckily for you, in this Process Street post I’ll be exploring what a chronotype is, the 4 different sleep chronotypes, and how to find and hack your chronotype for maximal productivity.

Just read through these sections to get completed clued-up:

• The chronotype definition
• Bear, wolf, lion, and dolphin: The four chronotypes
• The benefits of identifying your sleep chronotype
• How to find your chronotype
• How to hack and make the most of your chronotype!

Time’s ticking, so let’s dive in!

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This is a guest post by Rodney Laws. Rodney is an ecommerce expert with over a decade of experience in building online businesses. He’s worked with the biggest platforms in the world, making him the perfect person to offer advice on which platforms to build your website with. Check out his reviews on EcommercePlatforms.io and you’ll find practical tips that you can use to build the best online store for your business.

Even after full-time remote work became a viable option, most businesses were strongly wedded to the classic 9-to-5 office setup.

Many thought it would tank productivity, impede communication, and damage how their business was perceived, despite the 30% of people working remotely full-time proving that remote work, well, works.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced businesses to try alternative measures. Those reliant upon footfall either pivoted drastically or shut down entirely, and all other companies faced the same, urgent question: Can we transition to being 100% remote?

Remote teams who were once dubious about remote work are now enjoying the benefits of increased flexibility, enhanced productivity, and saving money while working from the comfort of their own home. In fact, 74% of CFOs will move at least 5% of their onsite workforce to work permanently offsite.

However, there can also be disadvantages to remote work if they’re not nipped in the bud, such as burnout.

That’s why, in this guest post for Process Street, I’ll tell you how to avoid burnout as a remote team. I’ll cover what burnout is, why it’s so destructive, and provide you with tips and templates for making sure your remote team doesn’t suffer down the line.

Read through the following sections to get up to speed:

• What is burnout, exactly?
• How to avoid burnout: 5 tips to stop remote employee burnout
• Use Process Street to lead remote teams to success!

Or, if you wanted to dive into a template that helps team members to appropriately manage their days without overworking, there’s the Remote Daily Work Schedule Template below.

Click here to get the Remote Daily Work Schedule Template!

It’s time to get started with the rest of the post. ⌚️

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This is a guest post from Julia Samoilenko, a marketing specialist who writes about digital marketing trends and strategies for the Chanty blog. This powerful and free Slack alternative is aimed to increase team productivity and improve communication at work. Feel free to connect with Julia on LinkedIn.

Many of us like the idea of working remotely (especially if we have never experienced it). Out of bed and —Voila!— you are ready for work. No commuting, no noisy colleagues. Top level of independence and flexibility.

But what is remote work really like in practice? One day here at Chanty we had to answer this question and discovered what new benefits and challenges teams face when transitioning to remote-only mode.

Spoiler: there were many productivity pitfalls on the road to beneficial collaboration. It turns out that being an efficient remote worker is quite challenging. And that it’s twice as tough to manage a high-performing virtual team.

If you want to adapt to remote working best practices and maximize the benefits, then you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to reveal the ugly truth and teach you everything we’ve learned about a successful transition to remote work. After reading our ‘confession’, you’ll understand the challenges and methods on how to overcome them.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering:

• How to successfully transition to remote work
• Our key takeaways for remote work transition
• Additional self-management and productivity resources

Let’s dive right in!
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This is a guest post by Sharon Koifman, an expert in remote work with nearly two decades of experience running three companies 100% from his computer. Sharon has studied and researched not only how to operate remote businesses but how to create an amazing work culture where people love to come to work. These days Sharon runs DistantJob, a very unique recruitment agency geared specifically for finding remote developers who work from all over the world.

As the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) started spreading, many companies began advising their staff to work from home. With the virus now pandemic and many countries under some form of lockdown, there’s a large swathe of people who are working from home that have never done so before.

Are you one of those people?

If so, you may be wondering how you’re going to stay productive while working from home – especially if you have young children at home and are having to balance their care and education at the same time.

The good news is that it is doable. In fact, full-time remote workers have been doing this for years! You can learn from their wisdom (and mistakes) which I’ll share, so you can be as productive as possible.

Just make your way through the following sections in this guest post for Process Street:

• Common WFH struggles
• Working from home tips for staying productive
• Work from home like a pro with Process Street!

Let’s get started!

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Unequipped. Unprepared. Uncertain.

34% of people believe their organization isn’t properly prepared for employees to be working from home.

Speaking of which, has your organization recently – and rather hastily – transitioned from office working to working from home?

If the answer is “Yes“, no sweat. Process Street has you covered.

This post will guide you through the basics of working from home (WFH), the positives of it, the potential problems you could run into, on top of offering you our (free!) checklist templates that’ll ensure a safe and smooth WFH transition.

Read through the following sections to get completely clued up:

• What does WFH mean?
• The advantages of working from home
• WFH transition struggles
• Process Street’s free WFH transition templates
• Use Process Street for all recurring processes and tasks!

Or, if all you want is the checklists, get them here:

• Work From Home Office Space Checklist
• Remote Daily Work Schedule Template
• Virtual Meeting Checklist
• Onboarding Remote Employees Checklist
• Work From Home Policy Checklist
• Achieving Work-Life Balance Checklist
• Work Anxiety Resolution Checklist
• Critical Incident Stress Management Checklist

Let’s dive into all things WFH, ASAP. ‍
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Process Street is a 100% remote company. We have been from day one.

But our CEO Vinay Patankar has been remote longer than that. Process Street is Vinay’s third remote company, meaning 10 years of running companies remotely.

At the time of writing, we have around 50 employees across multiple continents and it’s working so well for us that we’ve just sealed our Series A funding round from Accel, Atlassian, and Salesforce Ventures.

We thought now would be a good time to do a deep dive into Vinay’s thoughts on remote work and why his experience of it has kept him remote.

For this Process Street article, we sat down with Vinay to ask him 4 key questions, which we’ve provided links to below:

• Were you distributed from day one?
• How many employees do you have and in how many countries?
• What are the biggest challenges of having a distributed team?
• What are the biggest advantages?

Vinay has also produced a short video series of key things to learn when working in or running a remote team. You can check these videos out in the section below: Continue Reading

This is a guest post from Derek Gallimore from Outsource Accelerator. Derek’s blend of extensive international business and travel experience means that outsourcing came relatively naturally to him. Derek has been in business for over 20 years, outsourcing for over seven years, and has lived in Manila, Philippines – the world’s outsourcing capital – for over five years. He has worked and lived in five countries and worked and traveled through dozens more.

A great business focuses on building customer relations. They need to reach out to their customers to fulfill their service needs, such as inquiries, service-related concerns, and marketing offers.

Someone needs to follow up on billings and collections. Another person needs to send out newsletters to its clients. When a new product or offer comes out, someone must inform the customers either through calls or emails. In some cases, someone also needs to gather data regarding customer satisfaction and commentaries on what needs to be improved in their products.

It can be tedious, especially for startups and small businesses with a few people on it to man these tasks at once, so strong customer service and sales teams are needed to fulfill these tasks.

Good thing is, businesses can rely on call centers to manage these activities. This article will tackle:

• Pros and cons of call center outsourcing
• Costs of an outsourced call center team
• How to find and hire a call center
• Best practices in hiring a call center

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It’s 8 am. Your alarm buzzes.

You roll out of bed, perform your morning ablutions, and then sit down at your desk, ready to take Monday by the horns. Which you do, because you’re working from home, and not some crummy, cramped office which is full of distracting coworkers.

Ahh. Bliss.

It’s 8 am. Your alarm buzzes.

You realize you were dreaming.

This rose-tinted view of remote work – and being part of a virtual team – was exactly that: A dream.

Although working remotely can be wondrous, it isn’t always easy.

As members of virtual teams (like myself) will tell you, there are countless challenges and hurdles teams must tackle – from maintaining a healthy work-life balance to establishing a culture of asynchronous communication – before a virtual team can reap the rewards of increased employee productivity, lowered business costs (Cisco saved over $270 million a year!), and improved employee happiness.

Luckily for you, this blog post contains everything you need to help your virtual team not only excel but become excellent.

Read through the sections below to get a proper handle on all-things virtual teams:

• Virtual teams definition
• What makes strong, successful virtual teams?
• How top remote companies go about managing virtual teams
• Overcome virtual team challenges with Process Street!

Now, it’s time to wake up, smell the coffee, and learn exactly how to instill and sustain a masterful, virtual team!

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