Staff Information

Evaluate your key responsibilities to ensure that they may be completed remotely. Discuss any questions or concerns with your direct supervisor.

Consider whether your home environment is conducive to remote work. Factors include the demands of other household members, household construction, appropriate lighting, seating and other basic conditions. Set expectations with others in your home regarding your interactions and availability.

Best practices and tips:

• Choose a location in the home that has limited distractions and ample natural lighting.
• Maintain good posture where you sit.
• Take regular breaks to look away from the screen and improve circulation.
• Stay consistent with your eating, sleeping, and exercise routine as appropriate.
• Structure your day, building in social time with colleagues and others.
• If you have peripheral devices, connect an external keyboard, mouse, headphones and/or monitor to increase your comfort.
• Maintain boundaries to prevent overwork – unplug at the end of your work time.

In light of COVID-19, remote work may occur while children or other dependents are present if their school or childcare is closed and alternative care is unavailable, under the following guidelines:

• NAMB is not responsible or liable for the health and safety of your dependents while you are working remotely, or for your health and safety while you are delivering care to your dependents. It is up to you to determine whether work can be conducted safely.
• If a dependent is ill and requires ongoing attention, you may need to use PTO, as needed. In light of COVID-19, PTO rules are being relaxed to allow for care of healthy children at home due to school or childcare closures.
• Employees are expected to determine what they can reasonably accomplish while dependents are under their care (whether healthy or ill), and the amount of time they expect to be able to work. Employees should address any concerns with their direct supervisor.

At a minimum, employees need a computer, internet and phone access. Employees should always follow NAMB technology policies and procedures while working remotely. NAMB provides many tools for collaboration and productive remote working. Examples include Workday, Microsoft Office 365 tools, Teams, OneNote, RingCentral and DocuSign. For security purposes, use of non-approved, cloud-based software and tools is prohibited. If you have technology needs or questions regarding approval of any technology tools, contact NAMB Information Services.

Virtual meetings are essential to productive remote work. NAMB’s primary tools for virtual meetings are RingCentral and Teams. If you have questions regarding virtual meetings, contact NAMB Information Services.

Virtual meeting best practices:

• Add a RingCentral or Teams option to all meetings proactively.
• Add a secondary host that can start the meeting in the event the host is running late or availability has changed.
• Log in early, and test your audio/video settings.
• Use your webcam if appropriate to increase interpersonal communication. If you expect distractions, limit your use of video.
• Use mute to reduce background noise when you are not speaking. The host(s) can also mute participants.
• For meetings where participation is essential, consider using the “raise hand” feature to help determine who will speak when. It can be difficult even with video to tell when someone is about to finish speaking or is waiting to speak.
• When using video, be thoughtful about where you are participating from and the setup. For instance, what individuals can see behind you, what noises might they hear from household members and pets, the lighting, etc. If your background isn’t something you want people to see, RingCentral and Teams have options to blur or obscure your background.

Employees must adhere to NAMB policies and procedures regarding transporting, transferring, or sending written or digital confidential data. If you have questions regarding these requirements, please clarify them with your direct supervisor.

Provide multiple forms of contact information to your supervisor. Update your emergency contact information in Workday.

Exempt employees will receive their regular pay while working remotely. All non-exempt employees who work remotely with NAMB approval will be paid for hours worked at their regular hourly rate of pay. Overtime must be approved in advance. 

Discuss with your manager how your time and performance will be managed. Communicate regularly with your manager regarding your work priorities, deliverables, timelines, etc.