John YorkTechnology Consultant, Pre-sales engineer, Project Manager| Ricoh IT ServicesLeesburg, Va, United States
I wrote this the other day when trying to get my head around now working from home full time. Please add anything to comments, and tell me where I am off base.
The sudden presence of the Coronavirus and its effect on work life cannot be underestimated. Entire companies and industries have been thrown into upheaval. Many individuals and professions have been shut down, and others faced with grave uncertainty.
However, quite a few industries and companies have embraced the work from home capabilities and lifestyle for some time and many already enjoy this and make it work successfully. But, suddenly being told to stay and work from home when you relish and expect to drive to an office and work face to face with your peers daily can be surprising to say the least. The lack of face time with peers, subordinates and superiors can leave a person feeling unmoored and adrift.
Here are a few thoughts from one project manager/engineer trying to navigate my way during these very uncertain times. I am organized, methodical, and I do tend to value and thrive with routine, and this pandemic has certainly changed that. I don’t hate change and I strive to embrace it, but I also value a known routine. Of course, the health of the world is far more important than my inconvenience or bother. I am just trying to offer some suggestions for making the most of the change, staying productive, sane, and of course healthy.
This list of ideas is not unique or exhaustive, and many of them have been written about before by writers and experts on working from home. These are what I have learned from them along with a few of my own observations now that I am a full-time member of the work from home crowd.
Logistics
Dedicated office space – a dedicated office or room in your house is ideal for most people, if available. It can be set up how you like for maximum comfort and productivity.
Shared space with family, roommates – this must be agreed upon by all effected persons in the home. It also requires a great deal of discipline to maintain professionalism during audio and video meetings, work hours, space use, and security and privacy of the information worked on.
Temporary spaces which can’t be permanently dedicated to work tasks – this is best for smaller homes or apartments, especially shared spaces and is ideal for use of laptops, tablets, smartphones and other mobile computing platforms. While this can be challenging for working with actual paperwork, an organized and disciplined person can pull it off.
Time management
Set up office hours – at first it might feel like you can work whenever you want, but the truth is everyone needs a certain amount of routine and some boundaries around when they will be working and when they will not. If you worked in an office prior to the pandemic, try to stick to those hours as closely as possible, knowing that you can be flexible now and break up your day in productive pieces as the situation calls for.
Dress for work – it is also tempting to take advantage of your home’s relaxed dress code. This is good and comfortable and provides some stress relief right now. But it can lull you into less than business like attitudes and a lack of decorum if you must attend video meetings. Dressing above stay at home casual allows you to know when you are at work and when you are not. A suit and tie or business dress might not be necessary, but a difference between stay at home casual and work at home casual should be defined and noticeable.
Take breaks, eat healthy meals at regular intervals – this is just sound advice for everyone. If you can have a quiet dedicated office at home, it can be tempting to just keep working, but productivity and your thought processes might suffer without healthy breaks and meals. Stepping away from the work can reenergize you, help you regain perspective, and generate new thoughts. Healthy meals should need no explanation. Meditating, taking a walk, spending a few minutes working on a jigsaw puzzle are all examples that can help.
Get out of the house if possible – the pandemic’s isolation requirements for those who exhibit symptoms does of course require staying isolated. However, for those without symptoms who also feel healthy, getting out of the house combined with the taking a break is healthy and productive. A walk out in nature, around the neighborhood, or just your own back yard can relief stress, clear your mind, and help you refocus on work when you get back to it.
Be flexible if personal responsibilities cut into the workday – this is a benefit where working from home excels. We all have personal responsibilities which impede on our work lives. Being able to break up the workday to attend to these is one of the many upsides to working from home. We can extend our workday further into the evening or starting earlier in the morning as the situation calls for.
Remember, we are all experiencing this, and we all have different demands on our time – now is the time to be understanding and empathetic to our fellow man. We truly are all experiencing this in different degrees and levels of stress. Helping our fellow coworkers, understanding their own situations, need for absences, and scheduling difficulties right now is vital to all of us getting through this unique ordeal.
Be patient with people not responding immediately – along with the above two points, patience with everyone will go a long way to spreading goodwill, greater understanding, and hopefully work productivity. This is a very trying time for everyone, and we are all doing the best we can.
Project management
Stay organized – we project managers are mostly organized by nature and we tend to take this sense of order with us. Take it home with you, get your space organized and set it up the way you like.
Maintain office supplies like you would in the official office environment – we PMs also tend to thrive with good office supplies to help organize and communicate ideas, reports, and filings.
Recreate the best aspects of the office environment – you don’t have to recreate your office from work but taking the best parts of it and making them your own at home can be very productive. For me, dual monitors and a KVM switchbox helps organize my desk space to my liking. Good lighting for the workspace, a more comfortable chair, even background music are all things to help ease the stress and invigorate our productivity.
Eliminate or reduce the worst aspects of the office environment – there is something we all dislike about the office. You don’t necessarily need it at home if it does not help you. I have more room at home than in my work cubicle. I have a dedicated printer. I have coffee I like better than what is available at work. As with the above point, now is the time to make this work from home space of yours truly yours by designing it to meet your needs.
Organize your work at home scenario like a separate project to be managed – right now, this is your most important project to complete successfully. This will not last forever, and at some point, we all might get to go back to our regular offices, if we want. Project management is all about short term or projects with a known end. While we don’t know when this pandemic will end, we can know that it will, and we can work and plan appropriately. The deliverables for this project are to weather the storm, stay connected, and be as productive as possible.
Communications management
Use all means necessary – email, text, voice, video – physical, face to face is out right now for the foreseeable future. That does not mean we don’t have other ways to communicate. We will all have to become more adept at these and get out of our comfort zone a bit more with those which might not be as easy for us.
When in doubt, reach out – we all want to stay in touch and this pandemic might be very difficult for those who thrive on personal interactions. Friends, family, coworkers will all appreciate knowing someone, you, are thinking enough about them to reach out. Working from home also can contribute to loneliness and getting into our own heads for far too often. Reach out.
Document communications – a balancing point to the above is the need to make sure we document these more ephemeral lines of communication to stay on top of our projects and work product.
Security & risk management
Maintain corporate InfoSec standards with all information in all media forms – this is especially important for those shared and temporary workspaces. Even dedicated offices at home require information security rigor and focus, and attention to detail in how we secure our employer’s and customer’s information.
Keep the least amount of paper necessary – digitize as much as possible given the requirements of your job and the project and make use of your employer’s cloud offerings so flexibility, reliability and stability of the information will extend beyond this crisis.
This cloud storage is also useful for collaboration and sharing with coworkers, customers and management as the work from home period extends further into your project’s lifespans. Ensure that you have a backup peer who can take over for tasks in case you get sick.
By no means is the above all inclusive or meant as a prescriptive or panacea for what we are all going through. I have found a combination of the above works for me. Trying different things out, keeping what works and discarding what doesn’t and staying flexible to the situation as it changes will go a long way to all of us getting through this together. Saving Changes...
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