My name is  Yusuke Mameda from Studist (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Studist Corporation that operates the SaaS “Teachme Biz” for B to B business.  

At our company, Studist (Thailand), all employees switched to “Work From Home” (hereinafter WFH), until today (2020/04/23) it has been the 6th week since we started WFH. Although there are some things that I can not follow up completely I feel that it is going well in general.

As COVID-19 began to expand in Thailand around the beginning of March, I received consultations from employees that they would like to work at home, but we did not implement it after confirming other companies and customers’ situations.

On Monday, March 16th, I reconsidered and decided to implement it.  I requested these following three rules to Thai head staff Ms. S.

・ Work only from home

・ Stay online

・ Be accessible

I made an announcement internally  that “We will start WFH tomorrow. Ms. S will contact you for details.”

One hour later, Ms. S published the WFH guideline. I admire that she made it very fast and effective.

We also duplicated this internal guideline and made it available in public as a sample (Reserved license images and links are unavailable for external use.)

Work From Home Guidelines (https://teachme.jp/8/manuals/8159405)

Then, the guideline was brushed up a couple times by the day we started WFH. 

In emergencies, the rules may change ,so instead of rolling out what has been decided by communication tools, it is more convenient for employees to check the latest information at any time by opening cloud data storage first and adding more contents.

From here, I will explain the guideline in detail. I hope this will be helpful to people who are going to start WFH or improve the guidelines.

1. Working hours

In our company, we used to carry out flextime, and the core time was from 11:00 to 16:00. This is to allow our employees to work with less stress on weather and traffic congestion. When switching to WFH, we don’t need to commute to work, so I set the company’s start time from 9:00AM.  Almost all of the employees’ lunch time gaps have been eliminated, and the online closing meeting will be held every day at 17:30.

2. Sharing task in real time

Every time I explain this, people always ask that “isn’t it too much? don’t employees hate it?” but this was the employees’ idea that “They want to know each other’s current task and be able to ask and/or request in a timely manner.” When I heard it, I thought, “Do you really want to do that?”

As a result, WFH is still going on (as of 04/23), and I’ve received staff feedback that they want  to continue WFH even after it is over because it’s easy to look back. It is good to use SaaS such as Asana, but this isn’t about project management, so we will continue with a spreadsheet for a while.

3. Always online

I’ve always used slack as a communication tool so it’s fine for me but I always ask employees to keep slack open and be online. Also, just like before the outbreak of Corona, I have employees post “To-do-list” before starting work and “Daily Report” after finishing work.

4. Always answer the call

I give my company cell phone or SIM card to everyone, so they must answer the call in general.  When you’re not in a hurry, give a message via Slack without ‘mention’ but please  ‘mention’ when you’re in a hurry. When I want to ask something immediately, I will call or chat via Zoom (See an explanation in the last step).

5. Home only

To avoid infection, of course, working at a cafe etc are prohibited but only at home. After WFH was extended, some employees went back to their hometown. I think living alone is stressful, so I allow them to go back to their parents’ home.

6. If necessary, please go to the office

If an employee wants to come to work, I do not stop them because some tasks necessary for business can be done only in the office. Likewise, it turned out that if the task of the management department is just only routine work, the staff just need to come to the office once a month (I will talk about this again in the future blog). 

7. Ask Teachme Biz first

Of course, staff are required to check Teachme Biz for operating procedures. Studist Thailand has about 130 manuals.  The current training for new employees also begins with updating and brushing up these manuals.

8. Keep contacting

I’ve included  the Zoom Personal Meeting ID so our employees can contact me at any time (＊ is not included in the internal manual). Even in Slack, I registered a new word in the dictionary (“Muzu”) meaning we can have a face-to-face meeting and  3 minutes discussion by sharing the screen on Slack. 　

These are our WFH guidelines. Next time, I would like to introduce the new employee training method when working from home operated by our management department.

Teachme Biz - Visual SOP Management Platform that simplifies paper-based manuals, Work Instruction, Workflow or SOP into images and videos in step by step approach (Visual-based). You can create, edit and manage working procedure by all devices including mobile phone, tablet and PC. No more frustrating on unclear working instructions in your team. Staff-friendly manuals is far more effective and helps the user actually achieve a task.

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