Despite working from home, you need to maintain a level of professionalism as you Zoom or Skype with your colleagues and bosses. For starters, don’t show up in your pyjamas. Also, ensure that you’re wearing a bra as you don’t want the attention to go misplaced.

Another tip is to preen yourself before the call and ensure you aren’t sporting hair that hasn’t been washed and brushed in three days.

The conclusion is to ensure you look clean and put together as you would for the office.

While working from home gives you to freedom to dictate your office setting, it pays to ensure that the surroundings look clean and neat. Any rubbish should be in the bin, dirty dishes should be cleared, distracting paraphernalia should be stored out of sight and clothes should be hung up properly.

Remember BBC Dad? This point is for those who aren’t living alone. Before you start your video conference, let your family members know that you would be occupied and shouldn’t be disturbed. You wouldn’t want the important call to be interrupted by squabbling kids or family watching TV too loudly.

While you might be used to long hours of meetings that involve a bout of eating and drinking, it is best to avoid doing so during video-conferencing. Imagine you’re giving a presentation but your colleagues see you reaching a hand into the bag of potato chips while you control the keyboard with the other – it doesn’t look favourable.

Some video conference calls are last-minute affairs, but the majority of them are pre-planned with calendar invites. As such, adhere to the schedule and don’t be late as you would be wasting the time of others. Plus, you want to ensure that you won’t encounter technical difficulties that would further delay the call.

Set an alarm or paste a post-it by the laptop to give yourself a reminder of the upcoming call.

Even if you’re one who is camera shy, these online meetings are no time to keep mum. Because you aren’t in the same working space as your bosses, it might seem like you aren’t contributing or worse, not paying attention. As such, train yourself to give responses and ask questions when it is appropriate to do is. Another tip is to prepare talking points beforehand so that you can sound clear and coherent.

While this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule regarding video conferencing, we show our faces majority of the time. On this issue, we suggest going with the flow. If your colleagues aren’t keen on showing their faces, then you don’t need to. On the other hand, do note that body language, facial expressions and more are means of communication as well. Plus, showing your face allows you to look at colleagues you haven’t seen in a while.

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Text: Yen Leng/NUYOU
Translation: Ho Guo Xiong