Things I have learned from 12 years of home working that might be useful to you
A few people have contacted me to ask for any tips on home working because I’ve worked mostly or entirely from home for about 12 years now. My WhatsApp responses are becoming a bit more refined every time. So I thought I would share what I think are some key points here, just in case they are useful.
Everyone is different
My work basically involves me sitting at a computer, sometimes having calls with people and, not very frequently, venturing out to run workshops in the real world. Accordingly it is pretty easy for me to work from home, or an office, or a cafe (though clearly not right now).
I’m talking to people who have to work out how to teach classes from home, or have to work at home while supporting frontline colleagues providing vital services which mean they have to go into work. I don’t have simple solutions to the sorts of problems they might have. But perhaps I can suggest some ways of thinking that might be helpful.
Also working from home is not for everyone. I would say that as a planning assumption I’d guess that 25% of people will find that they prefer it to going into work, 25% will find that they really miss the experience of going in every day and the other half will probably adapt reasonably well.
So if you’re suddenly working from home, I’d recognise that you might end up in one of those groups. And the 25% of your colleagues who are going to find this really difficult will need plenty of help and support.
And this is on top of the practical issues; some people are going to be forced into very solitary circumstances while others are going to be expected to juggle work around kids, dogs and adults who need attention and support.
For all these reasons and more, you will most likely find that you are not very good at working from home.
You will most likely suck at working from home (at first).
It may be self evident but I think it bears repeating. Working from home is not like going into work. If you’ve not done it before you are likely to have to learn how to do it. And learning means getting things wrong, a lot.
So be easy on yourself and supportive with colleagues as you try, and to some extent fail, to embrace new ways of working. Leaders can really help by being very clear that they don’t have all the answers either and encouraging teams to try different approaches and find out what works well and less well for each person, team and organisation.
Keep up the commute
Trying to create a clear distinction between times when you are at work and times when you are not at work, I find, is important. Taking some exercise before you start and when you finish work (dogs are very helpful for this), getting out of the house (at a safe distance from others) or carefully unboxing your computer and paperwork before you start work and then putting it all back into the box when your shift is over might all help.
And the reality of our current situation might mean that it is practically very hard to work 9-5. In principle home working might allow people to fit work in around their caring responsibilities. Of course managers have to allow and encourage this, and colleagues have to adapt to it.
Keep chores outside your working times as far as possible. And, if you are anything like me, you might need a bit of structure to keep focused but also take regular breaks. I strongly recommend The Pomodoro Technique as a starting point.
Get better at asynchronous working
When you are not in the same place as your colleagues you will miss out on an awful lot of non-verbal information compared to being in the same building.
If someone is next to you at a desk you can just tell if they are concentrating on something or a bit distracted and up for answering a question you have. If you are in different postcodes this will be much harder.
I know some people are trying to recreate this by leaving audio or video channels permanently open so you can create an office buzz. I’ve tried that and found it to be the worst of all worlds. It might work for you but I think that getting better at writing up your questions, thoughts or feedback and sharing them so that people can respond when they have the space and capacity to do so is a much more useful approach.
Do you need that meeting?
Video conferencing software is great and should undoubtedly be part of the remote working toolkit. Even for experienced teams, running meetings on video chat is always harder than in real life. There are time lags, you can’t read other’s body language so well, and so on.
So I would try to minimise the number of times you need to call people into a meeting. Personally I’d only hold video calls for three reasons:
- when you genuinely need to debate something: and then only the people who really need to be part of the debate should be there. Someone can write up the meeting (and/or you could record the entire debate) for the benefit of people who need to be updated on the result
- for social interaction: the sort of conversations you would previously have had in the canteen or staff room
- when the situation is genuinely fast moving and a group of people need to keep each other informed in real time. Even then, might it be better to do this in some written form. Writing can be referred to, reflected on and questioned in a way that a spoken update can’t.
When you do need a meeting I would suggest:
- one face per screen (do not have people in a meeting room sharing a camera: this is bad for meetings and also bad for social distancing)
- everyone uses headsets (or earbuds). Sound quality is really important; headsets minimise background noise and the risk of feedback
- chair them a little more strictly than you might do in real life. Establish a protocol for how people indicate that they want to speak next etc
- don’t have a mix of people in the office and some people dialling in. Everyone dials in, even if it’s from their desk. Again this is good for good meetings and good for social distancing.
There will be less social interaction… unless you encourage it
I strongly encourage you to use an instant messaging service to help everyone keep in touch. I know lots of people are getting to grips with Microsoft Teams right now, which I’m not that familiar with. I use Slack a lot and Basecamp. I’ve seen that other people are using WhatsApp, Skype and so on.
Whatever service you use, instant messaging at work can be daunting. Some people may never have communicated this way, others might be in 300 WhatsApp groups at home but have never used it for work, others might have been secretly using Slack in their team for three years.
One of the advantages of using instant messaging apps is that lots of people can see the conversation so they don’t need to rely on someone keeping them up to speed. But this means that the conversations happen, to some extent, in public, and lots of people are likely to be conscious of this.
None of us want to look silly or do something inappropriate in front of our colleagues. And in the UK writing has a special status. We often regard written communication as more loaded than spoken communication, so instant messaging, which is writing, can seem like a dangerous space.
This is another example where people may have to be supported to learn how to make best use of the channels. Again leaders can help by being clear that this is something we’re all going to have to work out together.
Because all of this is happening in the context of work, it can feel inappropriate to bring home life or personal feelings into the chats. Of course we bring our home life and our feelings into work all the time, and we create spaces where it’s appropriate to talk about what you did on the weekend, or how worried you are about your child’s maths homework.
Creating spaces in these chat tools to allow this is really important. A couple of things I have seen work:
- have a regular practice of asking check-in questions: which people don’t have to respond to but are encouraged to do so. So these might be very work related: ”What are you working on today?”; “What’s the task you’re most worried about today?”; personal: ”What did you do last weekend?”; or just fun: ”If you could only save one cake from a burning bakery, which one would it be?”
- set up spaces that are explicitly for non-work chat: ”The virtual staffroom”; ”The canteen”; “The coffee shop” where people know they can go for a bit of a break and have more social chats.
- get better at asking your colleagues how they are feeling. In real life we can often pick up that people are grumpy, upset or just a bit “off”. It’s much harder to do that remotely and so we all just need to keep checking. Though this may be best done in private messaging rather than in public channels.
##In summary
I enjoy working from home. This doesn’t mean that you will.
But I think the chances are that, once you and your colleagues have developed ways to make it work for your organisation, you will see a lot of opportunities in it. Beyond the important benefit of suppressing the spread of COVID-19 of course.
For me the really key things are:
- it’s different to working in an office, so don’t try to replicate the office, try to find ways to do these different things well
- everyone will have a different experience and everyone will make mistakes so be kind to yourself and encouraging to your colleagues
- you will need to work harder to understand how people are feeling. But that’s not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all