Heena Sharma Blog

  To ensure productivity along with enough self-care in between, Google has introduced a new Workday routine that makes Google Assistant help you stretch, walk and drink water as you work from home. Available in English, the new workday routine automatically reminds you of all the small and big things to do throughout your work day - from staying on top of your calendar to taking a break away from the desk. After you enable the routine in the Assistant settings on your Android or iOS device, you can start with a pre-set routine. For example, at 2 p.m., Google Assistant might suggest going for a walk, and then to grab a glass of water at 3 p.m. "At 4:45 p.m., you'll be reminded to start wrapping things up. Assistant will also regularly share the time with you throughout the day, so that you don't lose track of upcoming meetings," said Alice Liang, Product Manager at Google. Read More

Once a part of contingency plans, work-from-home is now the new working standard for businesses to operate amid the on-going coronavirus pandemic . While a make-do workstation at home can get you moving, there are things like dual-band wireless router, cloud storage, thumb drives, wireless keyboard and mouse, etc. that help elevate user experience and improve productivity and work efficiency. Routers and internet dongles You cannot establish a work-from-home set-up without internet connectivity. There are multiple ways to connect to the internet, but the most efficient in current scenario is wireless. If you have just the notebook or desktop, a simple 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi router would work just fine. However, if there are multiple devices like printer, scanner, external display, etc., then you need a dual-band wireless router to connect and manage all your connected devices. Read More

Asserting that central government employees may have to work with staggered attendance and variable working hours, the Personnel Ministry has come out with a draft framework for ' work for home ' for the staff post-lockdown. The Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) may provide the option to work from home to the eligible officers/staff for 15 days in a year as a matter of policy, it said. There are 48,34,000 central government employees. In a communique to all central government departments, the Personnel Ministry said the Covid-19 pandemic has necessitated many ministries to operate from home to maintain social distancing. Read More

Tracking employee productivity while they are working from home (WFH) is certainly not an easy task. In a recent report, global analyst firm ISG said that while 80 per cent of employees associated with IT sector globally are working from home during the ongoing lockdown, employee productivity has fallen 20 percentage points as compared to working from office. With the lockdown extended until May 3 in India, we are taking a look at the options available before the company to track employee productivity when they are working remotely. Read More