Due to the outbreak of Covid-19, everyone is forced to sit at home. But as the factories and industries need to be operational to sustain many lives, a new working style is adopted worldwide and that is work from home. Before the pandemic, this luxury was limited to IT and ITES services. But due to changed norms, everyone has forced to pick up the new working style. People hesitate to accept new things initially, they found them difficult or boring. But when practiced, the issues with the new things diminish, and new norms are created.
Staff from the educational sector are attempting this style for the first time. It is obvious that they may face some challenges. Here the educational staff is not only the tutors but also the institutional staff including teachers, admin staff, and others who work at the educational institute.
Here are some generic challenges and solutions suggested:
Challenge 1: Managing team communication and collaboration
To work efficiently, communication among staff is a crucial thing. Every staff should be on the same page so that the flow of communication is proper. With work from home working style, employees do not have access to each other and can have an adverse effect on team communication. So, there is a need for an official platform where all staff and employees can communicate.
Solution:
The school management software offers an effortless solution to overcome this challenge. The software comes with advanced tools like discussion boards, emails, chat groups where staff members can communicate instantly with their colleagues. Also, the software mobile app will give instant notification for the messages such that there will not be any technical gap between communication.
Challenge 2: Tracking the various tasks and improving productivity
A school is a busy place. A lot of activities are assigned to the staff and completion of those activities determines productivity. Remote working always has the issue of low productivity. Many employees may not use the resources wisely impacting productivity in a downward direction. Tracking these activities and keeping the productivity graph rising is a challenge in this new working style.
Solution:
There are many tools integrated with the school management system that tracks the employee working hours, the performance graph, report centers. Higher management members may use these tools to track down the responsibilities assigned to the staff. Tracking working hours can yield transparency and boosts the productivity of the employee.
Challenge 3: Core administrative tasks like school admissions, fee collection
School admissions and fee management are two important functionalities of any educational institute. Traditionally, it requires a lot of resources and better accuracy. Almost all schools have dedicated staff for admissions and fee management during peak hours. With a remote working style, how face-to-face communication can be done to complete these core tasks?
Solution:
School ERP systems have given an ultra-modern way of accomplishing the campus and non-campus activities of an educational institute. By overcoming all the flaws of traditional systems, the online admissions and fee management systems are ruling the industry now. Students and school management use the same portal for admission where staff can experience reduced overhead of maintaining the track of each underlying activity.
Challenge 4: Communication with students and parents
Parents and students are important stakeholders so the school management needs to keep them in the same loop. The school management has started the online sessions with the school management system but to get the involvement of parents in this task is a tedious challenge.
Solution:
As schools have adopted the virtual learning method for teaching, the software comes with dedicated platforms for discussion, debates. The digital classrooms are capable of giving the same quality education as the talk and chalk method. Teachers are enabled with online assessment, tutorials, rapid tests to evaluate the student performance. Also, the teachers and students can use the same platform to communicate with each other. Parents are given access to attendance, mark sheets, assessments so that they can also keep a tab on their ward’s progress. The school ERP software uses the app notification features to send important updates to parents.
Challenge 5: Maintain work-life balance
It is one of the common complaints about work from home style across different industries. Staff working from home may seem like there is no log-off time.
Solution:
To overcome this challenge, employees need to stick to the strict timetable for ceasing the work for the day. Take small breaks, do a quick exercise, stroll for some time. This small change in routine will help the employee to achieve better concentration.
It is not that smooth that educational sector employee works from home. Being novices, they may come across multiple challenges and they need to tackle the situation to get rid of them. The online school management software will play a game-changer role in the entire play. The combined effect of teachers, staff, and other stakeholders will give a positive atmosphere for the learners learning from home. So, let us adopt this new working style and step into the digital world as an expert!
