Over the years we have witnessed a significant increase in the ability to work from home, and this is certainly a welcome change for many of us. However today, in a different circumstance, office staff are forced to transition to working from home overnight due to the extenuating circumstances of the recent pandemic. While there are many benefits of not having to go to the office, including more sleep, a reduction in travel time and a more relaxed dress code, it does seem to be appealing as it comes with a lot of perks, where you get to work on your pajamas and avoid the stress of the daily commute and traffic, it also comes with real challenges. Working from home is not all rainbows and butterflies, as we may now know.
Below is a list of the most common struggles we are confronted with when working remotely:
- Setting time boundaries. Working from home has less structure in comparison to working in the office and because of that we tend to forget the time and take breaks , which results in staff either feeling burned out from working too much or being unsatisfied from all day procrastination.
- Handling distractions. At home, we deal with a long list of distractions, from the incessant chattering of family members, staying in bed, or watching the latest TV series on Netflix. No matter which way you look at it, there are plenty of reasons your attempt at working may fail.
- Lack of motivation. With no manager supervision or teammates around to boost our morale, it is easy to feel discouraged or lose track of our purpose, and hard to stay on task and avoid certain temptations.
- Communication and collaboration challenges. With everyone working from home, aligning the understanding of each team member has become more challenging to achieve. Even with the advancement of digital technologies, personal interactions remain unmatched.
The transition to working from home for us here at CyQIQ has not been without challenge, however so far adapting to this new way of normal has been a success and we have introduced some notable changes to navigate the difficulty of having geographically dispersed offices and staff during social isolation. Below are just some of them:
- Our slack channels have been separated into work and play, offering an avenue for staff to engage in news sharing, motivational quotes and of course the occasional meme.
- Zoom has also become an important vice for morning scrums, communicating with project teams and sharing happiness over lunch. Daily wrap up meetings have been initiated as a mechanism for increasing rapport and friendship among all staff, and it has been a great way to get to know our staff more each day.