Work from Home Productivity and Well Being

Working from home is big news. During the COVID-19 pandemic, those lucky enough to have avoided layoff are more likely than ever to be adapting to a working environment that is familiar and alien at the same time.

It can be surprisingly tough. A partner on endless noisy team calls, lack of employee relationships, a child who needs guidance on their home schooling assignments, the loss of structure and continuity: they can all be disorienting and exhausting.

And yet, not having to go to the office can offer surprising opportunities to develop a better work-life balance, and to tailor your own working day.

In this article, we will explore the possibilities offered by home working, and navigate a path through the pitfalls

There are three ways to remain productive when transitioning to a work from home environment:

• Create a balanced office structure
• Evaluate and monitor performance
• Maintain engagement and communication with your team

How do you create a balanced office structure?

Creating a balanced office structure is important to staying productive in a work from home setting. The work from home option often lacks organization and order. The benefit of working from home is the ability to create your own structure and workspace. It is important to create an office environment that you can easily remain motivated to perform well. Plan by arranging your office space to help you feel relaxed while working from home. Furnish your office with comfortable furniture, provide essential ergonomic office equipment and construct a pleasant setting to work in for 8 hours a day.

In your virtual space, you may need your furniture arranged to have a view of a natural landscape, picturesque scene instead of a blank or gloomy wall. Delineate the workspace from your home environment to eliminate frequent interruptions and establish a boundary between business obligations and your personal life. Come prepared to start each day with a positive mind-set to minimize distractions to your workflow.

Your positivity will influence innovation and creativity. Incorporate an aspect of accountability into your office structure by implementing a daily schedule. The daily schedule will help with establishing a routine. Keeping a routine will help with creating a balanced structure and sustain the performance that you had prior to working from home.

How do you evaluate and monitor performance to stay productive?

Another way to remain productive is to continuously evaluate and monitor your performance. Remain focused on your individual and team goals by dedicating sufficient time to important tasks and staying abreast of deadlines. Schedule meetings with your manager to clarify performance expectations, update your goal status and check completed milestones. Your results are the best leading measurement of your performance.

How do you maintain engagement and communication with the team to stay productive?

Working from home often creates a feeling of isolation for employees. Employees lose the ability to have frequent interaction and engagement in comparison to staff in a traditional office environment.

As a work from home employee, you must make the effort to build relationships virtually with your team through frequent communication and collaboration. Make use of your company's internal communication channels like Slack, Microsoft teams and Video Conferencing to remain connected to your team. Plan ad-hoc virtual breaks or team-building exercises to boost employee morale and connectivity to the team. You’re not alone because you simply work from home. So, resist the urge to work in a silo. Always ask for help when needed and offer to support your team when you can. Using a team-based approach is best to maintain engagement with your team members and manager and create an inclusive culture.

Working from home can present new challenges to your physical and mental well-being. So establish good routines to ensure that you don't lapse into unhealthy behaviour.

Without the time spent commuting, it may be tempting to start earlier and finish later. This can make you more tired than usual, so make sure that you keep to regular times for starting and ending work.

Always ensure that you get enough sleep, and that you eat at regular times. Snacking can leave you feeling hungry at the wrong times, and irritable as a result. It's also not a healthy way to eat.

Regular short breaks can keep you energized and focused, and will also rest your eyes from continuous screen time. Try setting a countdown timer while you do, say, and an hour of work. When the alarm goes off, reward yourself with a five- or 10-minute break to make a coffee, or get some fresh air. Remember, the idea is to take a screen break, so no swapping one screen for another by immediately picking up your phone!

While you need to be comfortable to concentrate and to avoid backache, it's also vital that you get out of your chair during the day.

Working Securely at Home

You're likely accessing your organization's data and systems remotely, so be secure. Take all the protective measures you would when working in the office, and more.

Use only secure Wi-Fi networks that require a password for access. Maintain strong password protocols and ensure that you're using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Your organization will likely insist on this anyway, but if not, ask them about it. It greatly improves cybersecurity.

When you back up your data, don't save sensitive material to removable media, such as USB sticks or flash drives. These can transfer malware and viruses, and you can also lose them easily.

Lock your computer when it's unattended, even if you're only going to be away from it for a few minutes. Your partner and family likely aren't security risks, but they shouldn't be allowed to see confidential data, while random keystrokes by your children or pets can cause havoc!

Keep your devices in a safe place, out of sight of anyone who might be passing your window or work space. This is particularly important if your home can be accessed by anyone you don't know well.

Working from home has become the new normal and there is a need to get HR system to ease the monitoring and management of employees from home.

Adaptive HRIS aids businesses in the management of staff and increases the productivity level in the following ways;

Adaptive HRIS eliminates a lot of paperwork, it helps standardizes processes related to employee information like employment history, Personal information, certifications, education, and compensation information. It also saves times by gathering and keeping all the information at ONE place. It helps protect personal information both from hackers and unauthorized users by encrypting it.

It offers a more secure way to process the salary by securing this kind of data with password authorization and storing information. From on-boarding to Full and final process, a complete payroll and expense management system for HR. Payments processing for travel, salary, bonuses and many other expenses.

On-boarding of new joiners with an employee self-service portal to manage (add/edit) their personal as well as professional information. With an HRIS, an employee can check their leaves, holiday calendar, leaves of other employees, ability to add/edit details of work either from home or from a client location, add/edit details about their reimbursements, they can do it themselves.

HRIS aids you to define KPI and measure how effectively resources are performing and are achieving their business objectives using the Performance management module. With the help of Adaptive HRIS, companies can get 360-degree feedback in real time. Constant monitoring of performance-related data is likely to positively affect employee performance, also the past data can also provide strategic insights into compensation, rewards/incentives, and planning of future professional goals.

CONCLUSION

Since the onset of COVID-19, more people than ever are working from home. This brings both challenges and opportunities, and requires a shift in a whole range of working practices.

Establish a physical working environment that's secure and comfortable, with minimal distractions. Give your day a structure and a routine that allows for breaks, and plenty of fresh air and exercise.

Maintain your productivity by focusing on your goals, organizing your tasks, and tackling procrastination. But don't forget to give yourself some downtime when you need it. Also, build in time for your friends and family. You have responsibilities to them, too.

Celebrate team and personal successes, and keep a record of the tasks you complete, so that you can see how productive you're being.

And take the time to maintain and cultivate relationships with your co-workers through transparency and clear communication. This helps to combat any sense of isolation, and promotes strong team bonds.

Above all, make sure to get Adaptive HRIS System for proper monitoring and management of employees.

Social Security and Pension

As people develop through their lifetime they have an expectation that a time will come when they will be able to retire. For some people the State pension is sufficient to provide a basic level of income. Others may have an opportunity to accumulate wealth without using pension schemes - perhaps through their business ventures or other assets. But most people will want to supplement what they have with some form of pension scheme. Many employers also take the view that, while their employees are working, they should be building up an entitlement to a pension when they retire.

A retirement plan is an arrangement to provide people with an income during retirement when they are no longer earning a steady income from employment. Often retirement plans require both the employer and employee to contribute money to a fund during their employment in order to receive defined benefits upon retirement.

When people come to retire they will experience a reduction in income - a pension makes up for some of this loss of income in retirement. In order to encourage pension schemes, the State provides tax relief on contributions made to pension schemes and the growth in their investments.

Now let’s get into the law, what does the law says about Pension and its implementation?

The National Pensions Act, 2008 in Ghana establishes a contributory three-tier pension scheme consisting of the following:

• A mandatory basic national social security scheme
• A mandatory fully funded and privately managed occupational pension scheme
• A voluntary fully funded and privately managed provident fund and personal pension scheme

The basic national social scheme operate under the Social Security and National Insurance Trust. The occupational pension scheme, provident fund scheme, personal pension scheme and other privately managed pension schemes are managed by trustees approved by the board.

The objective of the scheme is:

• To provide pension benefits to ensure retirement income security for workers
• To ensure that every worker receives retirement and related benefits as and when due
• To establish a uniform set of rules, regulations and standards for the administration and payment of retirement and related benefits for workers in the public and the private sector.

The social security scheme applies to every employer and to each worker employed by its establishment, self-employed persons who opt to join the social security scheme

Let me take you through the contribution of an employer to the social security scheme.

An employer of an establishment shall pay for each month in respect of each worker, an employer’s contribution of an amount equal to thirteen per cent (13%) of the worker’s monthly salary. The employer shall deduct from the salary of every worker in the establishment immediately at the end of the month, a worker’s contribution of an amount equal to five and half per cent (5.5%) of the worker’s salary for the period, irrespective of whether or not the salary is actually paid to the worker.

Out of the total contribution of eighteen and half per cent (18.5%) an employer is supposed to transfer the deduction to the mandatory scheme within fourteen days

What should be the percentage of the contribution to be remitted by an employer to the mandatory schemes on behalf of each worker?

An employer shall remit the following to the mandatory scheme on behalf of the worker:

• Thirteen and half per cent to the first mandatory basic national social security
• Five per cent to the second tier mandatory occupational pension scheme

Let’s engage in some questions and answers concerning Pension schemes.

Is it compulsory for an employer to make a contribution to the third tier in addition to the first and second tiers?

No. An employer may in addition to the total contributions being made by the employee and the employer, make voluntary contributions to a scheme under the third tier.

What is the penalty for non-payment of contributions by an employer?

If the employer fails to pay a contribution within the specified period:

• A sum equal to three per cent (3%) per month of the contribution payable shall be added to the contribution as a penalty
• The Director-General shall serve a demand notice to the defaulting employer and if payment of the contribution and penalty is not made within thirty days after the date of the service of the notice, the Director-General may proceed to collect and recover the contribution and penalty; and if an employer without reasonable excuse fails to pay the contribution and the penalty, he/she may be ordered to pay an additional penalty of a sum equal to three per cent of the total of the outstanding contribution and penalty imposed.

What is hazardous employment benefit?

A member of the social security scheme who has attained the age of fifty-five years and has been a worker at an underground mine or at a steel works or in any other employment determined as hazardous employment for an aggregate period of not less than one hundred and eighty months, is entitled (on retirement) to full retirement benefit.

What conditions qualify a worker for pension entitlement?

A worker is qualified for a pension when he or she satisfies the following conditions:

• A minimum contribution period of not less than one hundred and eighty months
• Has attained the age of sixty years, or fifty-five years in the case of an underground mine worker or a worker who has opted for voluntary retirement with reduced pension and filed an application for superannuation.

How is pension entitlement computed?

The minimum pension payment is based on fifty per cent (50%) of the average annual salary for the three best years of a member’s working life. Where a worker works beyond the minimum contribution period, the amount of pension payable is increased by one and half per cent for every additional twelve months worked up to a maximum of eighty per cent.

Social security and pension scheme will be well monitored, and easy to implement with the aid of an HR software. The payroll module in Adaptive HRIS enables the employee to have check in check out whether the right amount has been deducted and transferred to the appropriate scheme. It allows you to view your master payslip where all deductions and benefits are displayed at anywhere not necessarily walking to your HR to request for it.

Types of Employees

As the labour market continues to expand in complexity, there are many different types of employees found in a typical business. Companies may have as many as five or six types of employees working for them at once. Understanding the classifications of employees can help you decide which type or types are best for your organization in terms of staffing needs and productivity fluctuations. In this article, we will discuss what employees are, the most common types of employees and how contingency workers are different from traditional employees.

What are employees?

Employees are individuals who are hired by a person or business to perform work for the person or business, also referred to as the employer. Additional factors that make someone an employee include: The person is on the company's payroll and receives a specific salary or wage, the individual is eligible for benefits and other perks offered by the employer, the person has a written or implied contract of employment, and the person is protected by law in terms of wages and employment rights

Types of employees

There are several classifications of employees and companies can hire one or many types of employees to perform work. The most common employee classifications include:

• Part-time employees
• Full-time employees
• Temporary employees
• Casual Employees

Part-time employees

Part-time employees are individuals who work less than 40 hours a week and are typically paid by the hour rather than salaried. These employees are still considered legitimate employees of a company but may not be eligible for benefits.

Full-time/ Permanent employees

Full-time employees are those that work an average of 40 hours a week and are eligible for benefits. Because the Fair Labour Standards Act does not provide a definition for part-time or full-time employees, employers are given the liberty to decide how they classify full-time employment within their organizations. Employers with 50 or more full-time employees must offer health care coverage to their full-time employees and their dependents.

Temporary employees

Temporary employees are those that are hired on a temporary basis, often for a set period of time such as six months. They may also be hired to work on a specific project and stop working for the company when the project is complete. Temporary workers are entitled to the Act’s minima in respect of minimum wage, hours of work, rest periods, paid public holidays, night work and sick leave, irrespective of whatever terms agreed by the parties.

Casual Employees

A casual worker is a worker engaged on a work which is seasonal or intermittent and not for a continuous period of more than 6 months. A contract of employment for a casual worker need not be in writing; but casuals have rights to minimum remuneration for each day worked, overtime and medical facilities.

What are contingent workers?

Contingent workers are individuals who are outsourced by a business to perform specific duties on a non-permanent and non-employee basis. They may work remotely or in the office but are not considered an employee of the company. Contingent workers are typically experts in their field and are sourced to complete certain projects based on their skillset. Examples of contingent workers include freelancers, consultants and independent contractors. Contingent workers often perform under a statement of work provision that is agreed upon at the onset of the relationship with a company. Once a project is complete, the worker will no longer work for the company at that time. However, companies may utilize the same contingent workers on recurring projects if the company was satisfied with the worker's performance. Contingent workers are different from traditional employees in such a way that, they do not have access to fringe benefits such as health insurance through the company, they are not salaried, they are required to pay for and file their own taxes with the GRA , and they have control over how and when they perform their work

Types of contingent workers

The following are the common types of contingent workers hired by individuals and companies:

• Contract workers
• Independent contractors
• Interns
• Consultants

Contract workers

A contract worker is a person who is retained by an organization for a set period of time to perform a specific task or duty. How much the contract worker will be paid is also pre-determined and may be paid before, during or after the worker has completed their job.

Independent contractors

An independent contractor is a person or firm sourced by a company to perform work or services. Independent contractors may work on a permanent basis for the company or they may work on a single project or as-needed. These workers are responsible for paying their own taxes and are not eligible for benefits through the companies they work with. Independent contractors may also be referred to as freelancers, subcontractors or contractors. Examples of an independent contractor include actors, freelance writers and auctioneers.

Interns

An intern is a person who performs work for a company on a paid, unpaid or partially-paid basis in exchange for the work experience gained. Many high school and college students participate in internships to prepare for their careers after school. Internships typically last for a few months and after this time some interns are asked to become permanent employees by the company.

Consultants

A consultant is a self-employed person who offers professional advice in their area of expertise. For example, a consultant may specialize in education, law or marketing and provide companies with expert advice in an attempt to help the company improve in these specific areas. Consultants provide their services on a temporary basis but may be utilized repeatedly by a company based on the organization's consulting needs.

Employment of Women

Motherhood confers upon a woman the responsibility of raising a child. This process also changes the way in which she is perceived in society and at her workplace. It can necessitate her to take more than available leave options, and job security can be at risk. Significant social and personal adjustments are necessary to cope with such a situation. A working mother, especially one who has the good fortune to be able to balance her home and work, enjoys the stimulation that a job or career provides. She develops the ability of raising a useful member of society and at the same time gains financial independence. Along with motherhood, work adds to the completeness of being a woman.

Looking at all these situations a woman go through, the labour law act 2003 has indicated some protection rights to govern women employees. I will be discussing few but most important ones with you in this article.

Employer has every right to assign overtime work for employees with the exception of pregnant and women with a child less than eight years. Unless with her consent, an employer shall not assign or employ a pregnant woman worker to do any night work between the hours of ten O’clock in the evening and seven O’clock in the morning. A pregnant woman worker should not be assigned, whether permanently or temporarily, to a post outside her place of residence after the completion of the fourth month of pregnancy, if the assignment, in the opinion of a medical practitioner or midwife, is detrimental to her health. A woman worker, on production of a medical certificate issued by a medical practitioner or a midwife indicating the expected date of her confinement, is entitled to a period of maternity leave of at least twelve weeks in addition to any period of annual leave she is entitled after her period of confinement. A woman worker on maternity leave is entitled to be paid her full remuneration and other benefits to which she is otherwise entitled. The period of maternity leave may be extended for at least two additional weeks where the confinement is abnormal or where in the course of the same confinement two or more babies are born. Where an illness, medically certified by a medical practitioner, is due to her pregnancy, the woman worker is entitled to additional leave as certified by the medical practitioner. A nursing mother is entitled to interrupt her work for an hour during her working hours to nurse her baby. “Nursing mother” means a woman with a child suckling at her breast for a period of not more than one year. Interruptions of work by a nursing mother for the purpose of nursing her baby shall be treated as working hours and paid for accordingly. An employer shall not dismiss a woman worker because of her absence from work on maternity leave.

All these protection of assignment of Women employees are well displayed and It’s essential to put into practice in one’s organisation. Adaptive HRIS can serve as a solution to the implementation of these laws/ protections. The leave of absence module in Adaptive HRIS enables you to request, check, plan, approve and configure any leave type suitable for your company. The pregnant woman worker or the mother may present a written complaint to the National Labour Commission established under section 135 against an employer who contravenes these laws.