Making sense of working from home

For most of us, COVID-19 has pushed us unwillingly into our homes where we are now expected to work, rest and play in a limited space for the foreseeable future. We are finding it difficult to make sense of the world right now and that includes making sense of the way we work.

Before these life-changing times, many a helpful article and book written about working from home was useful in helping us create a unique working space away from kids, partners and other household interferences. Advice on having natural daylight to give us energy and even what coffeemaker or kettle was best to make refreshments was aplenty, but these are very different times and working from home is not the same; there are different pressures.

There is the pressure that if we work from home we are to be available and productive 24/7. These are exceptionally testing times for businesses and individuals alike but it does not change the fact that as employers we have a duty of care to ensure that our staff have the right equipment and access to the best tools to make remote working not only possible but also easier. Our biggest responsibility in good times and especially in challenging ones is to ensure the safety and well-being of our employees.

As employees we want to give tasks our best effort. We want to show that we are good workers even when at home during a pandemic. We don’t want our employers to think we’re slacking off—especially when working in our PJs or from our beds.

Here is where discipline comes in. Schedules, at the best of times, are a challenge but when working at home they become very useful tools to help us keep our sanity. For those of us who work in the global workplace we also have time zones and geographies to take into account. At times like this, we can afford to be kinder to ourselves with our schedules. We are all doing our best. One person’s ability to work an extra hour should not be added pressure on another colleague.

I once had a client who would wake up at 2 am with a brilliant idea and then felt she had to share it right at that moment. She would pull out her laptop from under her bed and would whip up an email to her entire team or the specific member who needed to receive it. One such member of her team found that very stressful. He felt that he needed to be more alert and on top of things even if it meant checking his emails at midnight. Now, those were not Corona times; those were normal everyday situations. When I met the team to try and help with team development, the stress came to the surface. After much unravelling of the problem we discovered that my client’s particular method of working was affecting not only members of her team but also the manager herself. Within one week of keeping to a schedule and the discipline of only working within that schedule the team felt lighter and more productive.

The new ways of working during these crisis-laden times are different. We are finding ourselves sitting for periods that are far too long. We also participate in many more video conferences and meetings than we are used to. These are strange times and whilst we happily moved from being in the office to working from home, we have not adjusted our ways of working.

So, whether you are a manager or a team member, whether you are working on your own or part of a bigger business in these times of additional stress, a different approach could be the answer.