And ... if this pandemic lasts for many months

I think that healthcare provision is an operational work that can't be performed as projects and as such there is no "central" project manager in healthcare. Nonetheless healthcare related projects do exist to help healthcare provision.

If the way the pandemic has been handled is considered not be suitable then doctors and other specialists would be asked to come up with improvement proposals and governments would choose to put in practice some of them.

If the implementation of some of the proposals are better suited for projects then yes project management specialists would be required. So I think there is some potential in this area.

I have never been involved in healthcare related projects, do the PMs must be medical doctors in these projects?

Dear Luis,

After many weeks of people working from home we are now starting to see the negative side of this policy and what issues would need to be addressed, policies put in place that would be separate from an organisations own WFH policies.

This would take the form to legal and legislative changes and updates to the existing framework that is used to govern this policy.

Such behavior is mainly based around email communication, were there is a lot more out of hour email communication coming predominately from an persons own project team and organisation. This would mean that people are no longer working a conventional nine to five work day as they would in the office but approaching work in a more ad hoc and unplanned manner depending on when it fits around there existing lifestyle.

Also when documents are updated and timestamped with a persons own network logon credentials you can follow their work pattern that is a lot different to an office based employee.

Marketing emails are more targeted and personal which may give grounds that far more data mining and cookie tracking of a person internet usage across a whole host of websites is being used more frequently and in greater numbers than that was the case before.

With less places for people to spend their money those that are still opened and delivering to their customers are the ones greatly benefiting from this movement.

More tools online that offered as a trial period that gets users to input their credit card details before offering the free limited subscription. This is going against generally accepted standard and is more taking advantage of people their this situation as apposed to assisting them and opening more avenue and opportunities for people to explore.

I would be interest to see what bad habits and unhelpful changes other people have noticed as a result of this extended period of WFH and if these are enough to turn people off the WFH policy for the foreseeable future.

Daire

Dear Luis,

After many weeks of people working from home we are now starting to see the negative side of this policy and what issues would need to be addressed, policies put in place that would be separate from an organisations own WFH policies.

This would take the form to legal and legislative changes and updates to the existing framework that is used to govern this policy.

Such behavior is mainly based around email communication, were there is a lot more out of hour email communication coming predominately from an persons own project team and organisation. This would mean that people are no longer working a conventional nine to five work day as they would in the office but approaching work in a more ad hoc and unplanned manner depending on when it fits around there existing lifestyle.

Also when documents are updated and timestamped with a persons own network logon credentials you can follow their work pattern that is a lot different to an office based employee.

Marketing emails are more targeted and personal which may give grounds that far more data mining and cookie tracking of a person internet usage across a whole host of websites is being used more frequently and in greater numbers than that was the case before.

With less places for people to spend their money those that are still opened and delivering to their customers are the ones greatly benefiting from this movement.

More tools online that offered as a trial period that gets users to input their credit card details before offering the free limited subscription. This is going against generally accepted standard and is more taking advantage of people their this situation as apposed to assisting them and opening more avenue and opportunities for people to explore.

I would be interest to see what bad habits and unhelpful changes other people have noticed as a result of this extended period of WFH and if these are enough to turn people off the WFH policy for the foreseeable future.

Daire

Dear Daire,

To be honest, I am also starting to see a loot of bad habits, like you mentioned, an exaggerated used of passive communication like email, also virtual teams formed without any kind of training of remote work, at first sight it's misleading thinking that managing a remote team is equal to managing a located team there are different challenges.

Less support from the managers to their team members, they spent a lot of time in managers meetings and customers meetings forgetting the team members, specially those who still have to work in the premises and are exposed to more risks, in this moment I consider that leading by example is almost inexistent.

Apparently most of the companies that are offering now virtual live trainings, are making the mistake of charge the same price as is were face to face, when we know that a lot of logistics costs were eliminated with this change o paradigm, besides that they can extend their target market and not be confined to a location.

But, I think probably time will balance all these problems, at least I hope. Apparently in Portugal the activity is preparing to return to normality in the end of the month, let's see what will happen.

How are the things there, in Ireland is similar to UK ? The TV's do not give any focus to Ireland only talk about UK generally.

Alexandre Costa

Dear Daire
Thank you for sharing your opinion with us

Interesting what you wrote: "I would be interest to see what bad habits and unhelpful changes other people have noticed as a result of this extended period of WFH and if these are enough to turn people off the WFH policy for the foreseeable future."

I think it’s too early to draw conclusions

Dear Alexandre,

Yes I would agree with your assessment that managing remote teams is a lot more challenging especially when there is no face to face communication with your team.

There seems to be some element of regression where some members of the project teams are not mature enough to be self managed and those that you would think could self manage are not ideal candidates for WFH and vice versa.

In contrast more junior members of the project team who have grown up with the internet, remote learning and classes are getting on with their work and are more use to this seamless transition.

My impression is that project team members are somewhat taking advantage of the situation (and the good weather here in Ireland at the moment) to using WFH and the general freeze in new content on projects being created to their advantage.

Here in Ireland, the same level of restrictions that were brought in at the start of the month are still in place and are being strictly enforced.

This does not seem to be ending any time soon with provisions being made to keep the restrictions in place for up to six months.

Each country is looking around and seeing what other countries are doing, were the spike of cases is occurring before deciding on whether to ease the restrictions.

At the moment at current trends it look like the End of May/Start of June before we will see any let up of restrictions so its more of the same for now.

Daire

Dear Daire,

To be honest, I am also starting to see a loot of bad habits, like you mentioned, an exaggerated used of passive communication like email, also virtual teams formed without any kind of training of remote work, at first sight it's misleading thinking that managing a remote team is equal to managing a located team there are different challenges.

Less support from the managers to their team members, they spent a lot of time in managers meetings and customers meetings forgetting the team members, specially those who still have to work in the premises and are exposed to more risks, in this moment I consider that leading by example is almost inexistent.

Apparently most of the companies that are offering now virtual live trainings, are making the mistake of charge the same price as is were face to face, when we know that a lot of logistics costs were eliminated with this change o paradigm, besides that they can extend their target market and not be confined to a location.

But, I think probably time will balance all these problems, at least I hope. Apparently in Portugal the activity is preparing to return to normality in the end of the month, let's see what will happen.

How are the things there, in Ireland is similar to UK ? The TV's do not give any focus to Ireland only talk about UK generally.

Alexandre Costa

Dear Luis,

I agree its too early to draw conclusions however what most surprises me is that with project managers looking for team to be more self organised, project methodologies leaning more towards this approach; this approach somewhat breaks-down when the 'children are let out of the classroom'.

I do not wish to insult anybody but if this COVID-19 outbreak is a trial for the complete abandonment of the office in favor of WFH I do not believe the case has been sold for the WFH policy and there still needs to be some defining as to what type of work and people benefit greatly for a WFH policy and what type of work and workers should stay in the office.

Daire

Hi Daire,

In my opinion remote work is in most cases less efficient than office work. There are many reasons for this but I don't think they have to do with the ability of the project team members to self-manage.

For starters many people can't concentrate on their work when they are at home. Home is usually the place where you rest and recover after work and being focused in such an environment is very hard for many people. There are also a lot of distractions at home.

When you are at the office you are more focused on the work but also communication with your team mates and sometimes even with your stakeholders is much more efficient and a lot of work is done much faster.

As PMs are concerned most of them are not bosses have no formal authority over the project team members and many of them are less mature than them. Some PMs are fresh graduates in their mid 20s working with senior SMEs in their40, 50s, 60s with much more working experience and also at a much higher pay.

So I would not blame the lack of employee control the reason that remote work is less efficient, most PMs are not people managers and are not even responsible for controlling the project team members.

Less efficient communication and difficulty on concentrating on work, are in my opinion the main reasons remote work is less efficient.